fmf hero 122625

mobile masthead 5MIN

Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Health Care On Trial

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Affordability Grinch
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Not to be a downer or anything on Christmas Eve, but was your holiday spending this year a little on the thrifty side?
One or two fewer presents under the tree? A less fancy cut of meat for the Christmas Day entree? It&rsquo;s what you had to do to cope with the cost of living, right?
And others are probably worse off than you. Figures released last month by Bank of America show that nearly a quarter of all households are living paycheck to paycheck &ndash; and that percentage has grown relentlessly in recent years. (The good news: The rate of that growth is slowing.)
I don&rsquo;t mean to depress you. The whole point of this pre-holiday edition of our 5 Bullets is to empower you against the affordability Grinch who&rsquo;s out to steal your Christmas &mdash; as well as your Thanksgiving, Fourth of July and every other day of the year.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Before anything else, please wrap your mind around this: The inflation rate is climbing down, but inflation will likely persist for the rest of the 2020s. In economist-speak, inflation will be &ldquo;sticky.&rdquo;
The official U.S. inflation rate topped out in June 2022 at 9.0%. Yes, it&rsquo;s retreated since &ndash; 2.7% as of the most recent reading. Surely you&rsquo;re still feeling the impact.
The Federal Reserve has an official inflation target of 2%. We can forecast confidently that the Fed won&rsquo;t get there for several more years.
In 2022, researchers from Bank of America&rsquo;s U.K. division combed through extensive data going back decades from most of the globe&rsquo;s developed economies.
They found that once inflation pokes its nose over 5%, getting back to 2% takes an average of 10 years. Click the chart to enlarge&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/jhakTnEsrmshwfAZ2QUcW/676dd4a98b24c07467f6622f42d8b3ba/StickyInflation.png" alt="Sticky Inflation" />
A separate study conducted last year by the firm Research Affiliates arrived at the same broad conclusion: &ldquo;Above 8%, reverting to 3% usually takes six&ndash;20 years, with a median of over 10 years.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />OK, we&rsquo;re going to get weird now: Want to know an asset class that&rsquo;s almost a surefire winner for the next five years? It&rsquo;s razor blades.
We&rsquo;re deadly serious. Figure out how many blades you go through in a year, and then go to Costco or Sam&rsquo;s Club or BJ&rsquo;s and buy five times that amount. We can nearly guarantee a return on your investment at the end of the first year because by that time the price will be higher. And the returns will only get better as time goes by.
Our modest suggestion is a good starting point to explore a &ldquo;lost&rdquo; inflation survival manual &mdash; now over 40 years old, and more relevant than ever.
Most of what follows is a reprise of a collaboration between myself and veteran financial publisher Addison Wiggin over a decade ago, circulated to a limited audience. It deserves a wider hearing &mdash; especially now.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Before You Buy Another Ounce of Gold or Silver, Do This
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The usual guidance to fight a rising cost of living is to buy precious metals. Which the late John Pugsley thought was a fine idea&hellip; but he preferred to attack the problem at the source.
Mr. Pugsley belonged to the first generation of &ldquo;hard money&rdquo; newsletter editors who made a splash during gold&rsquo;s epic run-up in the 1970s, along with other legends like Howard Ruff and Harry Browne.
But by 1980, gold was climbing down from an $800 high that wouldn&rsquo;t be seen again for 27 years. Pugsley refined his guidance in a pathbreaking book called The Alpha Strategy: The Ultimate Plan of Financial Self-Defense. Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and Pugsley defined the Alpha Strategy as &ldquo;the first plan for any individual to protect his wealth.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Wealth,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;is made up of real things. It is hammers, lathes, shovels, typewriters, windows, doors, walls, pencils, shirts, shoes, rugs, apples, automobiles and bread. Wealth comprises all those things we use, enjoy and benefit from.&rdquo;
He urged readers to rethink the entire process of working for a living and preserving purchasing power: &ldquo;Instead of converting labor into money, money into investments, investments back into money and money into real goods once again, convert your surplus earnings directly into real goods. Simply stated, invest your savings in those real things that you will be consuming in the future. Save only real wealth.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The Alpha Strategy entailed three levels&hellip;
<ol>
<li>Invest in production. If it&rsquo;s something you need to make a living &mdash; education, a skill set, tools &mdash; this takes priority over anything else.</li>
<li>Save consumables. This is the stuff you use on a day-to-day basis &mdash; razor blades, pasta, tires &mdash; if you use it up and it has a decent shelf life, it falls under Level 2.</li>
<li>Save real money. If after Level 2 you still have savings left, then you can put it into precious metals and other tangible assets.</li>
</ol>
Note well: The Alpha Strategy is not a &ldquo;prepper&rdquo; or &ldquo;survivalist&rdquo; plan for the end of civilization as we know it. You will not &mdash; indeed, should not &mdash; load up on No. 10 cans of Mountain House freeze-dried meals.
&ldquo;While you may choose to put away freeze-dried foods,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote, &ldquo;remember that they do not fall within the definition of good savings assets&hellip; The Alpha Strategy is a means to protect purchasing power, and is not intended to be a means to defend against social collapse.&rdquo;
Although under present circumstances going into 2026, it can&rsquo;t hurt. Heh&hellip;
The best part about the Alpha Strategy is you can start with any amount of capital. &ldquo;If you have only $100, you can protect it completely against inflation and all investment risks by simply buying things now that you know you will have to buy next week, next month or next year. If you have $1,000 or $10,000, the same thing holds true.&rdquo;
Better yet, all your &ldquo;gains&rdquo; are tax-free.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Level 1: Invest in Production
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The greater the investment you make in education and tools, the more you will produce and the higher your income and standard of living will be,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote in The Alpha Strategy.
By education, he was careful not to specify a college degree. For purposes of the Alpha Strategy, education means &ldquo;the acquisition of knowledge that will enable you to produce a product or service that will be in demand by others.&rdquo; Or it might entail learning a second trade, in case your current skill set becomes obsolete.
Meanwhile, think of the tools you use to earn your living. &ldquo;Whether you are an accountant whose only tools are a calculator, an accounting pad and a pencil; a mechanic who uses wrenches, drills and hammers; or a manufacturer who needs warehouses, lathes, presses and automatic screw machines, the principle is the same.&rdquo;
OK, the accountant of 1980 undoubtedly had to spend money on ever-increasing amounts of computer power in the decades since, but you get the idea: If it&rsquo;s something that won&rsquo;t go out of date quickly, stock up before prices rise any further.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Level 2: Save Consumables
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />On to Level 2: &ldquo;Once you have invested as much of your available capital as you can in education, tools, supplies and facilities for production, the next logical place to put your savings is into those goods that you and your family will consume in future years,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote.
Whether it&rsquo;s toothpaste, light bulbs or antifreeze, goods that have a long shelf life and won&rsquo;t become obsolete before you use them are all fair game for the Alpha Strategy.
It might sound daunting at first. But it&rsquo;s much easier to accomplish now than when The Alpha Strategy was published. Then, Pugsley had several pages of advice about how to dicker with retailers to get bulk discounts and how to seek out wholesale suppliers. In the age of the internet and wholesale clubs like Costco and Sam&rsquo;s, you don&rsquo;t need to resort to such measures.
So&hellip; let&rsquo;s run down a shopping list.
Food: &ldquo;Foods are the No. 1 consumption item for most of us,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote, &ldquo;but because of their perishable nature, they must be carefully selected.&rdquo; So forget about meat and produce. Even with a freezer, &ldquo;the storage cost is high relative to other goods.&rdquo; Consider instead&hellip;
<blockquote>Canned goods: Shelf life varies, but figure on using them up within 18 months. Even a one-year supply will insulate you against rising prices</blockquote>
<blockquote>Sugars: The shelf life of sugar is just on this side of forever. &ldquo;Jams, jellies and other preserves will last indefinitely, as will most fruits that are packed in sugar syrups.&rdquo; Honey and molasses will keep for years; even if they harden, just heat and stir</blockquote>
<blockquote>Grains and legumes: Wheat, rice, peas and beans will all last for 10 years or longer. Beware: If you grind the wheat into flour, that shelf life turns into mere months</blockquote>
<blockquote>Tea: A &ldquo;near perfect&rdquo; savings asset, Pugsley said. Bulk buying gives you significant savings, and tea takes up little space and suffers little if any loss of quality over time</blockquote>
<blockquote>Pasta: It can keep for five years or longer.</blockquote>
Coffee? At the time Pugsley wrote the book, debate raged over its shelf life. A casual search of the internet today reveals that&rsquo;s still the case. You might want to experiment.
Health and beauty aids: &ldquo;Items such as deodorant, shampoo and toothpaste will keep indefinitely when stored in a cool, dry place, and mouthwash will keep up to three years under these same conditions&hellip; Don&rsquo;t forget razor blades, toothbrushes, sanitary napkins, combs, brushes and first-aid supplies.&rdquo;
Cleaning supplies: Depending on their chemical makeup, not all detergents will last indefinitely. &ldquo;The best Alpha items in the cleaning equipment category are brushes, brooms, mops, vacuum bags, pot scrubbers, trash bags, compactor bags, sponges and scouring pads.&rdquo;
Paper products: Yes, they last forever as long as they&rsquo;re not exposed to light, bugs or mice. But there&rsquo;s a catch: &ldquo;The biggest drawback to some of these goods is their low cost per cubic foot, as this makes them costly to store.&rdquo; More about this shortly&hellip;
Clothing: Yes, fashions change. But men in particular could easily load up on 10 or 20 years&rsquo; worth of socks, underwear and T-shirts.
Automotive: &ldquo;Storage space and styling taken into account,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote, &ldquo;you may decide to buy an extra new car this year and put it up on blocks.&rdquo; Five years on, you might be very satisfied with the purchase. If that&rsquo;s too out there, consider stockpiling replacement parts, motor oil and tires.
Around the house: Here too, spare parts for furnaces, water heaters and such might be useful. At the very least, consider small hardware items and garden supplies.
Wine: Pugsley was an oenophile, and he waxed eloquent about wine storage for four pages. &ldquo;The investment in a substantial personal wine cellar,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;offers the best of everything: low risk, protection against inflation, no taxes on the gain and an interesting and pleasurable avocation &mdash; in other words, it is the perfect asset for saving.&rdquo;
Don&rsquo;t take this up without some basic knowledge about which wines store well and which don&rsquo;t.
Also beware the temptation to deplete your stash faster than you expect: &ldquo;My first adventure into stockpiling,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote, &ldquo;came when I bought what I thought would be a two&ndash;three-year supply of wine. The convenience of having it on hand each time we had a nice meal turned it into a one-year supply.&rdquo; Which defeats the purpose of keeping your cost of living low&hellip;
Most hard liquor, by the way, can last 10 years or more if you store it properly. Beer? Forget it.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Ah, but where do you keep everything? And how much room do you need in the first place?
&ldquo;The amount of room you need,&rdquo; Pugsley wrote, &ldquo;will depend on the amount of money you have to invest and the type of goods you decide to stockpile.&rdquo;
A helpful tool is to figure the cost of an item relative to the amount of space it takes up, the value per cubic foot. This is why we encouraged you at the start of today&rsquo;s 5 Bullets to stock up on razor blades &mdash; a large supply takes up little space &mdash; so you wouldn&rsquo;t find the idea intimidating!
Here&rsquo;s a table taken straight from The Alpha Strategy. The dollar amounts are vastly out of date, but they&rsquo;ll get you thinking about which items give you the most bang for your buck if you have limited space.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1RhvpxgIqsshRiOMbsRZh0/cc38174f6e9408c93a3d144ef12986d4/StorageCosts.png" alt="Chart" />
At 1980 prices, Pugsley reckoned the average value per cubic foot of the goods you&rsquo;d store would be $25. Thus, a $10,000 stockpile would require 400 cubic feet of space. &ldquo;It could be kept in a space 4 feet deep by 7 feet high by 14 feet long, or roughly a 4-foot-deep storage area built along the wall of your garage.&rdquo; That said, a garage might not be the ideal choice, he said: You want a space that&rsquo;s cool, dark and dry.
Don&rsquo;t forget to think about insurance if loss of the goods would affect your standard of living for the worse.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Level 3 (Save Real Money)... and Beyond
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Then you get to Level 3 &mdash; saving real money.
Still have some cash left after building up your stash? &ldquo;You are ready to explore the third level of the strategy: the accumulation of real goods that you can eventually sell or exchange.&rdquo;
Pugsley&rsquo;s preferred vehicles were raw commodities. Granted, pork bellies and barrels of oil are problematic&hellip; so he leaned mostly toward metals, and not only the precious variety. &ldquo;Copper, zinc, lead, tin, nickel and aluminum are all metals that can be stockpiled, are universally used and can be expected to be in demand for centuries to come.&rdquo;
Forty-five years later, his words take on new relevance as copper and other base metals will be essential to the buildout of the power grid to accommodate AI.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Eager to explore more? It&rsquo;s easy.
Late in his life &mdash; he died in 2011 at age 77 &mdash; Mr. Pugsley posted a free PDF file of The Alpha Strategy on his website. And while his site is long gone, fans dutifully reposted the PDF. <a href="https://zombieprepdotnet.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/book2-preface.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Here&rsquo;s a link.</a>
If you prefer a real book in your hands, used copies abound on Amazon and AbeBooks. Figure on shelling out a little under $15. Note well: Only the real book contains an appendix listing the shelf lives of literally hundreds of consumer goods.
The sooner you start, the sooner the strategy will begin paying off. No better place to start, either, than those razor blades.

shutterstock 2224376361

The Affordability Grinch

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />2025 Report Card
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />It was perhaps our team&rsquo;s most out-there forecast for 2025 &mdash; and it was a banger.
Welcome to the Paradigm Press 2025 report card. We&rsquo;ll evaluate some of our team&rsquo;s top forecasts &mdash; the ones that panned out, and the ones that fell short.
During a gathering at our firm&rsquo;s Baltimore headquarters a year ago, the newest addition to our team &mdash; trading pro Enrique Abeyta &mdash; turned heads when he said AI darling Nvidia would shed $1 trillion in market cap sometime during 2025. Or at the latest, the first half of 2026.
His forecast came with 150 years of history and data behind it, and a dozen market cycles. The best analogy, he said, was that of Amazon during the dot-com bust from 2000&ndash;2002.
It didn&rsquo;t take long for Enrique&rsquo;s forecast to start coming to fruition. First, CEO Jensen Huang gave an underwhelming presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Then came the bombshell of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI engine that achieved stupendous results at little cost.
NVDA&rsquo;s market cap sank from a peak of $3.7 trillion on January 3 to $2.7 trillion by early March &mdash; ultimately sinking to $2.3 trillion in early April.
Enrique also forecast that NVDA shares would bounce back from those losses. Sure enough, from those April lows NVDA more than doubled to a $5 trillion market cap by the end of October. (Today? It&rsquo;s more like $4.25 trillion, up 28.8% year-to-date.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Trump will immediately open up federal lands to new permits for oil and natural gas exploration,&rdquo; Jim Rickards forecast in this space <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/power-to-the-people-trumps-energy-agenda" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on the first business day of 2025</a>.
The move was key to what Jim saw as a three-pronged energy plan &mdash; &ldquo;the implementation of &lsquo;drill, baby, drill&rsquo; energy policies, the end of the Green New Deal programs and changes in the current climate agenda.&rdquo;
Within a few weeks, Jim&rsquo;s forecast evolved into his &ldquo;American Birthright&rdquo; thesis &mdash; an aggressive plan by the Trump White House to unlock the energy and mineral bounty beneath federal lands, valued as high as $150 trillion.
In time, the Trump administration&rsquo;s strategy developed into one in which the federal government took ownership stakes in mining companies. Several Paradigm editors followed Jim&rsquo;s &ldquo;Birthright&rdquo; cue with a recommendation of the rare-earth firm MP Materials. Members of Altucher&rsquo;s True Alpha profited the most &mdash; $918% playing MP call options.
This is one trend where there will be many more profit opportunities during 2026. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Along the same lines as Jim&rsquo;s American Birthright thesis, Ray Blanco anticipated the Trump administration&rsquo;s launch of a &ldquo;National Strategic Computing Reserve&rdquo; &mdash; not unlike the government&rsquo;s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Ray said it would aim to ensure the United States is the world leader not only in AI but in the next generation of digital technology &mdash; quantum computing.
Further, he said the guts of a National Strategic Computing Reserve are already in place, thanks to a Biden administration initiative in 2021 that aimed to harness computer power to track the progress of COVID and other viruses.
And with figures like Elon Musk, David Sacks and Marc Andreessen in Trump&rsquo;s circle, Ray believed it would become a newsmaking force in 2025 comparable to the space program in the 1960s.
It didn&rsquo;t pan out exactly that way. But the administration has made clear it seeks to &ldquo;win the AI race&rdquo; with China. Among the steps it&rsquo;s taken in that regard is Uncle Sam acquiring a 10% stake in Intel.
INTC is a company that conventional wisdom had left for dead &mdash; but that Ray and several other Paradigm editors championed going into 2025. Sure enough, it&rsquo;s up 79.6% year-to-date.
Our 2025 report card continues in Bullet No. 2&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />2025 Report Card, Continued
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;We're witnessing something truly historic &mdash; the birth of machines that can actually think and reason,&rdquo; said James Altucher in this space <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ai-shows-its-work" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on the second business day of 2025.</a>
&ldquo;This isn't just about computers getting faster or smarter. This is about machines developing real problem-solving abilities.&rdquo;
No, that&rsquo;s not the same thing as AI becoming self-aware and bossing you around. &ldquo;Think of it like teaching a child to solve 247 + 385,&rdquo; said James. &ldquo;Instead of just guessing, they learn to add the ones column first, then the tens, then the hundreds.
&ldquo;Previous AI models often struggled with complex problems because they tried to solve everything at once. These new models are different. They take their time, think things through and explain their reasoning along the way.&rdquo;
James said the companies successfully harnessing this technology could &ldquo;create generational wealth for their shareholders.&rdquo;
That includes the aforementioned NVDA &mdash; a core holding in the Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network portfolio, up 288% from the newsletter&rsquo;s initial recommendation in September 2023.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner entered 2025 conscious of the fact the typical bull market runs about 5&frac12; years &mdash; and the current one began in October 2022.
That&rsquo;s based on market data going back to 1950. Using that rule of thumb, the bull could run until early 2028.
Sure enough, the S&amp;P 500 is on track to register three straight years of double-digit percentage gains.
That said, Greg warned at the start of the year that we were overdue for a 10% pullback. &ldquo;Be on the lookout, even in the first half of 2025, for the S&amp;P 500 to drop 10%.&rdquo;
Bingo. From a high of 6,144 in mid-February, the S&amp;P slid throughout March &mdash; then plunged in April after the president&rsquo;s &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; tariff announcement. The index bottomed on April 8 at 4,982 &mdash; a swoon of 18.9%.
Alas, Greg will be the first to admit he whiffed on his projected Bitcoin price of $279,000. Can&rsquo;t win &lsquo;em all.
We&rsquo;d be remiss if we didn&rsquo;t subject one of your editor&rsquo;s own forecasts for scrutiny. That&rsquo;s next&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Progress Report on 3-3-3
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Ahead of Trump&rsquo;s inauguration in January, the financial media were playing up the &ldquo;3-3-3&rdquo; agenda of incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Bessent set the following goals&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Cutting the federal budget deficit to an amount that&rsquo;s 3% of GDP</li>
<li>3% GDP growth by the final year of Trump&rsquo;s term</li>
<li>Growth in energy production equivalent to 3 million barrels of oil per day.</li>
</ul>
Those goals sound rather wonkish &mdash; but the broad idea is to juice economic growth to a point that it generates sufficient tax revenue so Uncle Sam&rsquo;s gargantuan debt load becomes more manageable.
With the proviso that we&rsquo;re not even 12 months into the Trump 47 presidency, let&rsquo;s see where things stand on each plank of the 3-3-3 plan&hellip;
<ul>
<li>As Trump prepared to take office a second time, the budget deficit as a percentage of GDP stood at shockingly high levels outside of wartime, a financial crisis or a pandemic &mdash; 6.3% in fiscal year 2024. For fiscal year 2025, that figure was trimmed slightly to 6.0%. Still high by historical standards, and there&rsquo;s a lot of work to do to get to 3%</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>As it happens, the Commerce Department reported third-quarter GDP this morning, behind schedule because of the government shutdown. &ldquo;The data show the economy growing at an average annual rate of 2.5% since Trump returned to office,&rdquo; says The Wall Street Journal, &ldquo;even after a first-quarter contraction as companies ramped up imports to get ahead of new tariffs.&rdquo; Going forward, 3% is achievable &mdash; but a lot has to go right. (And even if it does, GDP is a statistical abstraction that has little to do with your own prosperity)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Measuring the growth in energy production is a challenge because Bessent&rsquo;s yardstick is &ldquo;barrels of oil equivalent&rdquo; including both oil and natural gas. But oil production alone did grow almost half a million barrels a day in 2025. From the get-go, this was the most achievable of Bessent&rsquo;s goals.</li>
</ul>
On Jan. 15, I wrote that 3-3-3 is &ldquo;a variation on the same old playbook that&rsquo;s never worked.&rdquo;
Without a plan to slash federal spending &mdash; and I was already on record skeptical that DOGE would accomplish anything &mdash; the plan was doomed to failure.
I didn&rsquo;t outright forecast that 3-3-3 would be a bust in calendar year 2025 &mdash; especially since Bessent&rsquo;s goals were for the duration of the Trump 47 administration.
But everything hinges on the first element of the plan. The budget deficit as a percentage of the economy has to get out of crisis-era levels and back to something approximating &ldquo;normal.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;re nowhere near there yet. And we&rsquo;ll never get there unless the White House and Congress take a chainsaw to federal spending.
And how likely is that?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Silver $70
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Silver is making a run for $70 &mdash; only two weeks after breaking above $60 for the first time.
Actually the white metal broke above $70 as the sun rose over the East Coast &mdash; only to take a tumble after the release of the aforementioned GDP numbers.
(Apparently the theory is that because the numbers are &ldquo;better than expected&rdquo; the Federal Reserve is less likely to cut short-term interest rates during its next meeting at the end of January. Literally no one is going to remember this by the time we get to the end of January.)
But at last check the bid has poked its nose over $70 again. Overbought markets can stay overbought longer than you expect.
Gold is also in record territory at $4,459. But the HUI index of mining stocks is in the red &mdash; down nearly half a percent at 737.
Meanwhile, copper is also setting records today &mdash; over $12,000 per metric ton. It&rsquo;s up 37% year-to-date. Congratulations are in order for Rickards&rsquo; Insider Intel readers who collected 50% gains yesterday playing options on the big copper producer Freeport-McMoRan.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />At the same time, the S&amp;P 500 is inching its way back toward a record.
At last check, the index is up a quarter percent on the day, resting at 6,895 &mdash; only five points away from its Dec. 11 record. The Dow and the Nasdaq are likewise registering modest gains.
Crude sits a little under $58&hellip; Bitcoin just under $88,000&hellip; Ethereum at $2,954.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Gold Myth-Busting
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The following meme is catching fire on social media&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/32UteNYvB6jFC5ALkc5Ptz/9346fb08a8fa502032bd97662fbb9ea9/gold_meme.jpg" alt="Gold Meme" />
The caption is mostly accurate. Individuals could still retain up to five ounces of gold bullion in their personal possession. But yes, the dollar was instantly devalued relative to gold by 45%.
The photo itself looks&hellip; too perfect. Probably AI generated. An image search on Google for &ldquo;&lsquo;turn in your gold&rsquo; photo 1933&rdquo; turns up only one result and it&rsquo;s accompanied by the same caption and it was posted to the web only yesterday.
(Granted, Google search is nigh-useless anymore &mdash; but it&rsquo;s probably reliable in this instance.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The faux photo belies this reality: Most Americans voluntarily surrendered their gold years before FDR&rsquo;s order in 1933.
People didn&rsquo;t have to line up at the bank &mdash; and FDR did not send G-men door-to-door.
Instead, people had been conditioned over the previous couple of decades to use convenient &ldquo;gold certificates&rdquo; instead of gold coins.
As Jim Rickards explained it here in 2016, &ldquo;Banks slowly took the coins out of circulation (the way cash is going out of circulation today), melted them down and recast them into 400-ounce bars. Nobody is going to walk around with a 400-ounce bar in her pocket.
&ldquo;Then they said to people, in effect, &lsquo;OK. You can own gold, but it&rsquo;s not going to be in the form of coins anymore. It&rsquo;s going to be in the form of these bars. By the way, these bars are very expensive.&rsquo; That meant you needed a lot of money to have even one bar, and you weren&rsquo;t going to take it anywhere. You were going to leave it in a bank vault.&rdquo;
Americans were lured down the garden path with the promise of convenience. Why lug around those $5, $10 and $20 gold coins when you had those handy paper &ldquo;gold certificates&rdquo;?
Now you know.
The &ldquo;photo&rdquo; is certainly eye-catching. But it has nothing to do with the reality of how FDR executed his fiendish scheme&hellip;

fmf hero 122325

2025 Report Card

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Mafia Tactics
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Democrat or Republican, we cannot have the government arbitrating truth or opinion,&rdquo; said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at a hearing ten days ago.
This truth should be self-evident.
Even Ted Cruz can understand it and he&rsquo;s not the sharpest knife in the drawer (as Tucker Carlson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smemFVe0l5E" target="_blank" rel="noopener">demonstrated conclusively</a> last summer).
Cruz was addressing Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission &ndash; and spearhead of the Trump administration&rsquo;s approach to the media industry.
It was Carr who strong-armed Walt Disney Co. (DIS) in September to suspend ABC&rsquo;s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for some asinine remarks about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Disney wound up reinstating Kimmel less than a week later &ndash; but along the way Carr&rsquo;s pressure tactics affected the fortunes of DIS as well as three other publicly-traded companies.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Cruz is hardly alone in his stance. In fact, the guy who made Rush Limbaugh&rsquo;s career possible thinks the Trump-Carr media policy is &ldquo;a disgrace.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll introduce you to him in a bit, but first&hellip;
Ponder the pivot from the Biden years &ndash; when conservatives understood it was a bad thing for government to browbeat business owners and silence speech it doesn&rsquo;t like.
Conservatives like, well, FCC commissioner Brendan Carr.
In 2021, Democrats were pressuring cable, satellite and streaming providers to drop Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network from their platforms. Carr correctly labeled the effort &ldquo;a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys.&rdquo;
In addition, Carr rightly rejected the usual big-government notions of the FCC&rsquo;s role. &ldquo;The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the &lsquo;public interest.&rsquo;&rdquo;
[I put that one in bold for a reason. Stand by...]
Last year, he reiterated his pro-First Amendment stance, denouncing a Democratic proposal he said &ldquo;would empower the FCC to operate as the nation&rsquo;s speech police.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But when Donald Trump elevated Carr to FCC chair at the start of this year, Carr grabbed his badge and billy club &mdash; and got to work right away.
Few people outside government or media really noticed his heavy-handed enforcement tactics until September. That&rsquo;s when Carr undeniably pressured Disney to muzzle Kimmel.
&ldquo;We can do this the easy way or the hard way,&rdquo; Carr told podcaster Benny Johnson. &ldquo;These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there&rsquo;s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.&rdquo;
The following day he told CNBC, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re reinvigorating the FCC&rsquo;s enforcement of the public interest, and I think that&rsquo;s a good thing.&rdquo;
[You can&rsquo;t make this stuff up&hellip;]
The pressure was every bit as in-your-face as when the Biden administration <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/supreme-cowards" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sent threatening emails to Big Tech companies</a>, bullying them to take down users&rsquo; posts about COVID: &ldquo;Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on having it removed ASAP.&rdquo;
The only difference is that Carr was exerting his mafia tactics out in the open. As Sen. Cruz said on his own podcast, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s right out of a mafioso going into a bar, and going: &lsquo;Nice bar you have here, it would be a shame if something happened to it!&rsquo;&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/53TY7QqOAWQ7rUM3E8LAf6/440a4b84b9cab674b907561913aabe68/BrendanCarr.png" alt="Carr" />
Brendan Carr: FCC chair, aspiring mafia don&hellip;
Key point: Disney needs FCC approval for a previously-announced deal between its ESPN unit and the NFL; the NFL would take a 10% equity stake in ESPN while ESPN would acquire NFL Network and other NFL media assets.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Writing on the Wall
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Disney might have stood up to Carr&rsquo;s threats were it not for the ancillary threat to two much smaller companies ABC relies on.
Even before ABC suspended Kimmel&rsquo;s show, Carr&rsquo;s remarks prompted local station owners Nexstar Media Group (NXST) and Sinclair Inc. (SBGI) to pull Kimmel from their ABC affiliates. Together, Nexstar and Sinclair are how ABC reaches nearly a quarter of the U.S. population.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1dW6v9uWRUDtIHZJwgM0nb/67bae8f2a48bee59ea6e5da10efd7cf9/Map-TV-Stations.png" alt="Map" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Do not underestimate the intimidation factor for Nexstar in particular.
Nexstar hopes to pull off an unprecedented acquisition in the broadcast biz &mdash; and needs FCC approval before it can happen.
Less than a month before Kimmel&rsquo;s comments about Charlie Kirk, NXST announced plans to buy rival Tegna Inc. (TGNA) for $6.2 billion. Nexstar&rsquo;s share price zoomed 14% higher in the days before the announcement, as buzz surrounding the deal swept through the financial media.
If approved, the takeover would result in a level of consolidation never before seen in local TV.
For instance, Nexstar would own both the NBC and CBS affiliates in Tampa. It would own both the NBC and Fox affiliates in Denver. And in Indianapolis, the combined firm would control the NBC, CBS and Fox affiliates.
In a splintered media age, when broadcast television commands a fraction of the audience it did a generation ago, there&rsquo;s no plausible argument against a Nexstar-Tegna tie-up. Still, the FCC will have to rewrite current regulations or issue a waiver for the deal to go through.
Now does it make sense why Nexstar was so quick to pull Kimmel from its ABC stations?
"The decision to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar,&rdquo; a company flack told Communications Daily at the time &mdash; &ldquo;and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision.&rdquo;
They didn&rsquo;t have to. They saw the writing on the wall.
➢ Sinclair&rsquo;s case is different. Sinclair has always been a partisan animal. In 2004, ABC&rsquo;s 11:35 p.m. Eastern timeslot was still occupied by the news program Nightline. Sinclair&rsquo;s ABC affiliates preempted it one night when anchor Ted Koppel read aloud the names of the 721 U.S. troops killed in Iraq up to that point. Sinclair management said the broadcast seemed &ldquo;designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq." But even the warmongering Sen. John McCain thought Sinclair&rsquo;s posturing did &ldquo;a grave disservice to the public.&rdquo;
No, I haven&rsquo;t forgotten about the Limbaugh angle. Read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Reagan&rsquo;s FCC Chief: Carr Is &ldquo;a Disgrace&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />About the guy who made Rush Limbaugh&rsquo;s career possible: He was Ronald Reagan&rsquo;s FCC chair, Mark Fowler.
It was at Fowler&rsquo;s behest that the FCC did away with the &ldquo;Fairness Doctrine&rdquo; &mdash; and opened the way for a new, freewheeling era in talk radio.
Introduced in 1949, the Fairness Doctrine required the licensees of radio and TV stations to &ldquo;afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of conflicting views on matters of public importance.&rdquo;
Sounds sensible, right? In reality, however, &ldquo;It gave politicians and pressure groups a tool to harass any station that transmitted views they found disagreeable,&rdquo; recalled Jesse Walker, writing in The American Conservative in 2007. &ldquo;Even when it wasn&rsquo;t being deliberately deployed to suppress speech, it made broadcasters less willing to present ideas that might be controversial.&rdquo;
Fowler believed the Fairness Doctrine flew in the face of the First Amendment. On Aug. 4, 1987, the FCC unanimously abolished it.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6yntD8OSxzWgvdmJQM8Oo/02305e906b4a23322b308370723fb764/C-Span.png" alt="Fowler" />
Free speech champion: Fowler justifying abolition of the Fairness Doctrine to Congress in 1987
The rest is history.
"It is no accident that Limbaugh&rsquo;s show did not receive national syndication until a few months after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine,&rdquo; broadcast historian Paul Matzko wrote for the Cato Institute after Limbaugh&rsquo;s death in 2021.
Limbaugh himself frequently credited abolition of the Fairness Doctrine with aiding his rise to stardom. And whenever Democrats talked about reviving it, he called such attempts &ldquo;the Hush Rush Law.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Fowler is still around &mdash; he turned 84 in October. What does he say about Brendan Carr&rsquo;s censorship regime?
&ldquo;I know Brendan Carr well enough to know that he knows better. This is exceedingly disappointing&hellip; They&rsquo;re trying to undo everything President Reagan did.&rdquo; Fowler told the trade publication Variety this summer.
And this was before the Kimmel imbroglio.
At the time, Carr was helping Trump engage in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/good-for-wall-street-bad-for-main-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his successful shakedown of CBS</a>. Trump had sued the network on the grounds that the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris last year amounted to &ldquo;consumer fraud.&rdquo;
Under ordinary circumstances, the suit would have been laughed out of court. But at the time, CBS parent Paramount Global needed FCC approval to merge with Skydance Media. As such, Paramount settled for $16 million and Carr&rsquo;s FCC gave the merger its blessing days later.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It looks like it&rsquo;s corrupt &mdash; and I say that as a Trump donor and supporter&hellip; The law doesn&rsquo;t seem to matter,&rdquo; Fowler said of the CBS case. &ldquo;It feels a bit like the wheels are coming off.&rdquo;
Of Carr&rsquo;s conduct in the Kimmel situation, Fowler is even more scathing. &ldquo;First of all, his views on the First Amendment are totally wrong, and the worst is, he knows it,&rdquo; he tells Communications Daily. &ldquo;If you look back two or three years, he sang quite a different tune, fully First Amendment first.
&ldquo;His approach now is that freedom of speech is ensured by government oversight, really trampling the First Amendment rights of broadcasters for which President Reagan fought so long and hard.
&ldquo;To me, it's personal as well as legal and public policywise. And he is a disgrace. What he is saying, no other Republican chairman, in my view, and even Democratic chairman, has ever said.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Who Decides?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Fowler &ndash; as well as Sen. Cruz &ndash; gets to the heart of the issue: Government has no role as the arbiter of truth.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who shone a bright light on the Biden administration&rsquo;s censorship regime, put it this way in 2023: &ldquo;The authors of the Constitution understood that giving anyone the authority to decide questions of fact would create incentives for censorship, especially since government offices tend to be occupied by people with strong political beliefs.&rdquo;
But too many conservatives, traumatized by Charlie Kirk&rsquo;s murder, seem ready to ditch the principles they held dear as recently as last year. Fowler, they might say, is a fuddy-duddy out of step.
It&rsquo;s time, they say, for gloves off and scorched earth.
&ldquo;Under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right,&rdquo; said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) in September. &ldquo;And that there should be almost no checks and balances on it.
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel that way anymore,&rdquo; she told the Semafor news site.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Stuff like this makes your editor sick to his stomach. 
I broke into the TV news biz during the same summer of 1987 as the Fairness Doctrine was rescinded. I&rsquo;ve spent literally every working day of my adult life exercising the right to freedom of the press &mdash; a right bestowed by the Creator and secured by the First Amendment. That&rsquo;s 20 years in broadcast news, 18 years and counting in financial publishing.
The First Amendment is how the Paradigm editors can speak freely to you. They tip you off to investments they think could change your life. They warn you off investments they think could ruin your life. They do so without fear or favor.
Most important of all, newsletter editors traffic in ideas outside the mainstream. We were the original &ldquo;alternative media.&rdquo; A century ago, people thought Roger Babson was nuts for warning that the Roaring &rsquo;20s would end in tears. But in the end, he was right.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Turnabout Is NOT Fair Play
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />If American conservatives can&rsquo;t see the dangers of gloves-off and scorched earth, the acerbic Australian media critic Caitlin Johnstone does.
Her response on X last fall to the &ldquo;Turnabout is fair play!&rdquo; stance&hellip;
<blockquote>That only sounds like a cool argument if you believe the two-party puppet show is real.</blockquote>
<blockquote>In reality you're both lining up to give more and more of your power to the empire which remains in power regardless of who won the last election. They surrender some, you surrender some more, repeat.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Obviously American liberals should have known they were opening themselves up to return fire with their support for censorship when they were in power. Obviously they should not have done that, and people like me told them this the entire time.</blockquote>
<blockquote>That doesn't change the fact that you're handing the nonpartisan oppression machine more power that you will never get back every time you throw your support behind retaliatory acts of speech suppression.</blockquote>
<blockquote>You think you're hurting the libs, but you're just hurting yourself. You're just making your society more tyrannical and dystopian in ways that will inevitably affect you. You're clapping along with the two-handed puppet show like a toddler while your real oppressor picks your pockets.&rdquo; [Emphasis mine]</blockquote>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And there&rsquo;s nothing new about this dynamic. The late, great George Carlin saw it way back in 1992.
From his Jammin&rsquo; in New York appearance: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all you ever hear about in this country, is our differences. That&rsquo;s all the media and the politicians are ever talking about: the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the way the ruling class operates in any society: They try to divide the rest of the people; they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the ****ing money. Fairly simple thing&hellip; happens to work.
&ldquo;You know, anything different, that&rsquo;s what they&rsquo;re gonna talk about: race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other so that they can keep going to the bank.&rdquo;
Or as a meme this year put it even more succinctly&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6n1JLJUkShrNWUweDFM09j/d9ebacea395fdc83f8a652bd37cb9153/Comic-9-25.png" alt="Meme" />

fmf hero 122725

Mafia Tactics: FCC vs. DIS

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Gold Breaks the Rules
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Gold begins a new week making up for lost time &mdash; up nearly 2% and in record territory over $4,400.
No, there&rsquo;s no obvious catalyst. It&rsquo;s just what happens when any asset class is in a bull market. It acquires a momentum all its own.
In recent weeks it&rsquo;s been silver stealing all the precious-metals thunder. But gold is the foundation and the framework.
Silver, platinum, palladium and the mining stocks can deliver life-changing wealth when they get on the rally tracks &mdash; but that doesn&rsquo;t happen without a movement into gold.
What&rsquo;s behind gold&rsquo;s 70% year-to-date appreciation? And where does it go from here?
Some insight comes from economic historian Edward Chancellor in a recent opinion piece published by the Reuters newswire&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;By the turn of this decade it had become received wisdom that gold moves inversely with long-term real interest rates,&rdquo; Chancellor writes.
In other words, gold rises when real (or after-inflation) interest rates fall. And by the same token, gold falls as real rates rise.
&ldquo;Thus its value swooned in 2022,&rdquo; Chancellor explains, &ldquo;when central banks tightened the cost of borrowing and bond yields climbed.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Then something unexpected happened: Gold started to rise exponentially even as inflation turned down and inflation-adjusted bond yields rose.&rdquo;
Gold slid from $2,000 to nearly $1,600 in 2022 &mdash; only to begin an ascent that&rsquo;s still underway, even as long-term bond yields adjusted for inflation are also rising.
In other words, gold is breaking the rules.
Paradigm macro maven Jim Rickards says this is a huge development: &ldquo;This decoupling of gold prices and real yields means gold can continue to go up in diverse interest rate environments.&rdquo;
What changed?
Maybe you&rsquo;ve already guessed if you&rsquo;ve been keeping up with these daily missives: Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Washington responded with unprecedented sanctions &mdash; freezing the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank, some $300 billion worth.
&ldquo;The seizure of U.S. Treasury securities owned by Russia has caused large reserve holders like China, Japan and Saudi Arabia to ask if the same thing could happen to them,&rdquo; Jim goes on. &ldquo;The simple solution is to buy physical gold since it is not a currency and is not easy to freeze or seize.
&ldquo;Central banks moved from being net sellers to net buyers in 2010. That buying trend is continuing and getting larger.&rdquo;
Here again is a chart we can&rsquo;t show you often enough. Look how everything changed in 2022. And the 2025 number is for only the first three quarters of the year&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5pVBWUP9xWBa2I7OBGOZfF/2ea7a665fbba825ebdb335b1579844c2/5Bullets_Chart_110525.png" alt="Chart" />
This phenomenon &ldquo;puts a de facto floor under the price of gold,&rdquo; says Jim &mdash; &ldquo;because central banks will buy the dips to keep expanding their positions.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But central bank buying isn&rsquo;t the only factor propelling gold higher.
&ldquo;Holdings of gold by ETFs, a kind of proxy for retail interest, have been lagging the price action,&rdquo; Jim goes on. &ldquo;This means the ETFs are poised to expand their share issuance and gold purchases in the near future.
&ldquo;Above all, private institutional investors have gold allocations of below 2.0% of total assets. If that expanded to a mere 4.0% allocation, there&rsquo;s not enough gold in the world at today&rsquo;s prices to fill those orders.
&ldquo;That dynamic alone could send gold prices above $10,000 per ounce in the year ahead.&rdquo;
Understand, that&rsquo;s not a forecast per se. It&rsquo;s an extrapolation of current trends &mdash; and a recognition that nothing is getting in the way of those trends. If $10,000 doesn&rsquo;t happen in 2026&hellip; it won&rsquo;t be much beyond 2026.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, silver powered another $2 higher overnight &mdash; surpassing $69 before pulling back a bit.
Yes, silver has gotten ahead of itself. But assets that get ahead of themselves frequently rally much higher before taking a rest. &ldquo;Its next target is $78.50,&rdquo; comments Sean Ring in today&rsquo;s Rude Awakening &mdash; &ldquo;and it may get there sooner rather than later.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />About the Santa Claus Rally&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The stock market begins the new week where the old one left off &mdash; with a rally. But don&rsquo;t call it a &ldquo;Santa Claus rally&rdquo; yet.
&ldquo;Many investors are often confused about how the Santa Claus rally works, and when it actually takes place,&rdquo; says Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner.
It&rsquo;s not just a general year-end uptrend. The term was coined in 1972 by Yale Hirsch, longtime editor of the Stock Trader&rsquo;s Almanac &mdash; and he gave it a very specific definition. A Santa Claus rally covers the last five trading days of the year, and the first two of the following year.
With that in mind, &ldquo;The Santa Claus rally officially kicks off this Wednesday and runs through Monday, Jan. 5,&rdquo; Greg says.
&ldquo;So far, stocks are holding their gains today. A fitting end to 2025 and the past two months of choppy conditions starts now.&rdquo;
Checking our screens, the S&amp;P 500 is up nearly two-thirds of a percent to 6,876 &mdash; about 25 points off the index&rsquo;s record close back on Dec. 11. Curiously the S&amp;P&rsquo;s gains are a bit stronger than both the Dow and the Nasdaq &mdash; which are both in the green by a little over a half percent.
As for crypto, &ldquo;Bitcoin and Ethereum have been dead trades for the better part of the past two months,&rdquo; says Greg. But we&rsquo;re beginning to see signs of life following a nice Friday rally.
&ldquo;Bitcoin is moving toward $90K and is up more than 1.5% today while Ethereum is solidly above $3K.
&ldquo;Yes, there&rsquo;s still a ton of work left to do for the big coins. But every rally has to start somewhere. We&rsquo;ll see if they can continue their comeback moves into the short trading week.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Tanker Wars
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Intentionally or not, the Trump administration is picking a fight with the Chinese government over the U.S. seizure of Venezuelan-linked oil tankers.
It started on Dec. 10 when U.S. forces seized a tanker off the Venezuelan coast and escorted it to Houston.
Then last Tuesday night, Donald Trump declared &ldquo;a total and complete blockade&rdquo; of all &ldquo;sanctioned oil tankers&rdquo; entering or leaving Venezuela.
As we chronicled <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/taco-or-world-war-iii" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on Wednesday</a>, Moscow immediately called Trump&rsquo;s bluff &mdash; when a sanctioned Russian-owned vessel, the Hyperion, began approaching Venezuela with a cargo of oil-processing chemicals.
According to ship-tracking data, the Hyperion arrived yesterday at the Venezuelan port of Amuay.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But while the Russian-owned vessel went on its way unmolested, U.S. forces seized a Chinese-owned vessel on Saturday.
This is an oil tanker called the Centuries. The ship itself is not under U.S. sanctions but apparently the cargo is. The New York Times reports the ship was carrying Venezuelan oil en route to Chinese refineries. Further, unlike the first seizure earlier this month, this time there was no seizure warrant from the Justice Department to take possession of the ship.
And with that, Chinese state media unleashed its full fury on Washington.
&ldquo;The U.S. now faces another major strategic choice,&rdquo; says an article in the Global Times &mdash; drawing on a Chinese proverb.
&ldquo;History has repeatedly demonstrated that &lsquo;a just cause rallies abundant support while an unjust one finds little.&rsquo; Only mutual respect and equality can bring lasting peace and development, which aligns with the common interests of all countries, including the long-term well-being of the American people."
Yes, Global Times is a Communist Party mouthpiece &mdash; but it&rsquo;s not wrong.
In fact, on second thought maybe the second ship seizure this weekend is what&rsquo;s propelling the gold price higher.
That is, it&rsquo;s another no-confidence vote in Washington&rsquo;s efforts to be &mdash; as France&rsquo;s finance minister put it a few years back &mdash; &ldquo;the economic policeman of the planet.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For sure, the oil price popped big-time as markets reopened Sunday night. At last check a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up over 2% to $57.77.
As the day wears on, it appears U.S. forces tried to seize a third vessel but then gave up the pursuit. The Bella 1 was on its way to Venezuela to load a shipment of crude before turning tail back into the Atlantic.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Bud for Boomers
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Volatility in cannabis stocks notwithstanding, cannabis use among older Americans is on the rise.
In our Saturday edition, Emily told you about Donald Trump&rsquo;s executive order downgrading marijuana from a Schedule I drug (on par with LSD and heroin) to Schedule III (comparable to codeine and ketamine).
In anticipation of the order, cannabis stocks rallied hard last week &mdash; only to collapse once it was apparent that the cannabis industry still would not get access to the banking system.
Still, the long-term growth trajectory is intact. Figures from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2024 find 10% of Americans 65 and older reported using the herb at least once a year. That&rsquo;s up from only 0.3% in the early 2000s.
Which makes sense when you think about it. &ldquo;In the early 2000s, the 65-plus age bracket was comprised of the GI and Silent generations. These two groups were never known for their drug use,&rdquo; write demographers Neil Howe and Christian Ford at their Demography Unplugged Substack.
&ldquo;But over the last 25 years, the 65-plus bracket has become mostly comprised of boomers. And this Deadhead cohort has brought their weed habits with them into older age brackets.
&ldquo;Expanded access has also played an important role. Recreational marijuana is now legal in 24 states, while medical marijuana is legal in 40. As a result, just over half of Americans live in a county with at least one marijuana dispensary.&rdquo;
Paradigm tech-and-biotech specialist Ray Blanco guided readers to some of the earliest profits to be had in publicly traded canna-businesses in 2016&ndash;17.
He has his eye out for the next wave in the aftermath of Trump&rsquo;s order. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Free Pass for Big Pharma
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/baby-formula-blackmail" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Friday&rsquo;s edition</a> about Abbott Laboratories&rsquo; threat to pull baby formula off the market unless Congress gives it liability protection prompted a couple of responses&hellip;
&ldquo;Re your comment, &lsquo;If the studies and authorities say there&rsquo;s nothing to back up a link between the formula and necrotizing enterocolitis, rely on those studies and authorities in court and let the chips fall where they may. You shouldn&rsquo;t need special favors from Washington.&rsquo;
&ldquo;If only it were that simple! Shopping for the right judge and the right venue doesn&rsquo;t happen just in politics. Evidence allowed to be presented in court may bear little resemblance to what a typical person would perceive as facts, especially when scientific or technical data are involved.
&ldquo;In the absence of tort reform needed for product liability, how can you blame a company like Abbott from seeking alternate ways to level the playing field? Shouldn't they be making the best business decisions they can for their shareholders?&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The real problem is when someone can get a $500 million judgement against a provider for a bad outcome because the product designed to cure that fatal disease failed to do so,&rdquo; writes a reader who evidently is a medical professional.
&ldquo;Most preemies die without intense medical intervention. The logical business solution is to quit trying to save them and stop making the product. If the help-to-harm ratio is high, as your data suggests, every effort to keep helping is reasonable.
&ldquo;I look for NEC on every preemie X-ray that is taken. It is hard to identify early. I am not in a position to know what the treatment is and how often it is successful.
&ldquo;I have been sued twice because of bad outcomes. First one there was no payment. It was clear the patient was responsible for his own demise. Second was extremely sad. Pulled at your heartstrings. Full-term baby on formula got severe complications of NEC. Pediatrician and neonatologist took big monetary hits. NO ONE DID ANYTHING WRONG!&rdquo;
Dave responds: To be sure, my critique didn&rsquo;t make allowances for the America-as-a-litigious-society problem.
But I don&rsquo;t think the answer to that problem is to give Big Pharma free passes of the sort it got for the COVID jabs&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The mailbag thread about the Vietnam War is carrying into a new week&hellip;
&ldquo;So my girlfriend is a refugee from this country,&rdquo; a reader writes. &ldquo;She was caught trying to escape multiple times by the communists and some of her family were killed by them.
&ldquo;A friend of mine who fought in the war also said we were indeed winning and could have won the war. He had many crazy stories like being shoved into the luggage space of a Huey gunship to get airlifted out and the hatch would not completely shut. He said the number of political grifters such as LBJ owning stock in Sea-Land etc. was common.
&ldquo;The people in this country must make laws such as it being mandatory for the families of all politicians to fight in these wars, that they cannot trade stocks during their tenure and any evidence of familial inside trading will result in prison time, etc.
&ldquo;Until things like this are enacted and enforced the U.S. is doomed to die.&rdquo;
Dave: The timing of your note&rsquo;s arrival couldn&rsquo;t be more pitch-perfect&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6j7fhOdeNzqqFW8MPIuAAq/d3026167ed97437f05f6c70ed4b76518/mel_tweet.png" alt="Tweet" />

fmf hero 122225

Gold Breaks the Rules 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Baby Formula Blackmail
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Aries-Reign Peterson lived for only 79 days.
Born premature on Jan. 30, 2018, he got by on breast milk at the start &mdash; &ldquo;thriving and growing for several weeks,&rdquo; recalls his mother, Anika Hunte.
According to a lawsuit filed by Hunte against Abbott Laboratories (ABT), the boy&rsquo;s health started going downhill as soon as he was given a formulation of Similac made specifically for preemies. And it got worse after doctors added a Similac fortifier.
Then came the diagnosis: Necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC &mdash; an inflammation of the intestinal tissue, a condition that kills on average one premature baby every day in the United States. Aries-Reign went on life support and died on April 18.
Hunte&rsquo;s lawsuit is among hundreds now making their way through the courts &mdash; all of them alleging that Abbott&rsquo;s preemie version of Similac raises the likelihood of NEC. One of those cases resulted last year in a $500 million judgment against Abbott.
In response, Abbott has gone to Capitol Hill &ldquo;to press for a law that would throw out all pending suits and shield it from any future ones,&rdquo; according to an infuriating Bloomberg article.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Here&rsquo;s the plot twist: Abbott says if Congress doesn&rsquo;t accede to its wishes, it will pull the Similac preemie formula off the market.
Alternatively, Abbott is proposing the federal government take over sales and distribution of the product.
It&rsquo;s an odd tack to take given the company&rsquo;s insistence there&rsquo;s nothing wrong with the product.
&ldquo;Numerous studies and NEC authorities have made clear that preterm infant formula does not cause NEC,&rdquo; says a statement given to Bloomberg by Abbott PR flack Scott Stoffel. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the absence of human milk that increases NEC risk rather than anything harmful in formula &mdash; a product that&rsquo;s been helping infants thrive and survive for nearly 50 years.&rdquo;
Fine. If the studies and authorities say there&rsquo;s nothing to back up a link between the formula and NEC, rely on those studies and authorities in court and let the chips fall where they may. You shouldn&rsquo;t need special favors from Washington.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Make no mistake: What Abbott wants is the same sort of sweetheart deal the makers of the COVID jabs got.
Weeks before the first lockdowns in March 2020, the feds invoked the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act of 2005 &mdash; offering a liability shield against any developers of a future COVID shot.
&ldquo;For the next four years,&rdquo; said a CNBC article in December 2020, &ldquo;these companies &lsquo;cannot be sued for money damages in court&rsquo; over injuries related to the administration or use of products to treat or protect against COVID.&rdquo;
That was during the first Trump administration. A year ago, on its way out the door, the Biden administration extended those protections through 2029.
Yes, there&rsquo;s a government-instituted compensation fund &mdash; but getting money out of it is like getting the proverbial blood from a stone.
Per Bloomberg, Abbott&rsquo;s lobbyists &ldquo;are pushing for a similar fund that would give a payout to people who claim harm from its products, but would bar them from suing Abbott in court, according to a one-pager the company has given congressional staff.&rdquo;
The liability shield made its way through a House committee during the summer, but its future is murky.
No, there&rsquo;s no obvious investment angle here. ABT shares have gone nowhere this year; they don&rsquo;t look attractive either on the long or short side.
As an old colleague once said, sometimes we go in search of new investment ideas &mdash; and all we find instead is outrage.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Every Time This Happens, the Market Rallies
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The recent action by the Federal Reserve to cut their benchmark fed funds rate with the S&amp;P 500 near all-time highs is relatively rare,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
Indeed it&rsquo;s happened only 10 times since 1994. &ldquo;One year later the stock market has been up 100% of the time!&rdquo; he says. And per figures from Bespoke Investment Group, the average gain is 14.9%
Curiously, eight of these 10 instances have occurred under the current Fed chair Jerome Powell. &ldquo;The other two,&rdquo; Enrique says, &ldquo;were under Alan Greenspan during the last technology bubble&rdquo; in the 1990s.
Historical data like this affirms Enrique&rsquo;s position that the AI boom is destined to end badly &mdash; but not yet!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In the meantime, it&rsquo;s one of those four days each year when weirdness can ripple through the stock market.
It&rsquo;s a &ldquo;quadruple witching&rdquo; Friday, when four types of derivatives all expire at once &mdash; stock options, stock futures, index options and index futures.
But there&rsquo;s no evidence of weirdness at the moment. At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up 0.9% on the day at 6,835. The Dow&rsquo;s rally is weaker, the Nasdaq&rsquo;s stronger.
In the commodity complex, silver is on track to end the week in record territory, the bid currently $67.21. Big brother gold is also looking stout at $4,350 although it hasn&rsquo;t experienced the furious run-up that silver has in recent days. Crude is up 41 cents to $56.56.
The major cryptos are treading water, Bitcoin a little over $87,000 and Ethereum at $2,961.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />TikTok: The Final Chapter
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />It appears the TikTok deal is nearly across the finish line.
As mentioned here on Wednesday, the Trump administration has issued repeated extensions of the deadline set out by federal law for TikTok&rsquo;s Chinese owners to either sell to American buyers &mdash; or shut the platform down.
Yesterday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew sent a memo to his staff: Parent firm ByteDance has signed binding agreements with a group of buyers.
Per the memo, the new ownership lineup looks like this&hellip;
<ul>
<li>ByteDance will retain a 19.9% stake</li>
<li>Oracle (ORCL) will own 15%</li>
<li>The U.S. private equity firm Silver Lake will own 15%</li>
<li>MGX, an investment fund owned by the United Arab Emirates government, will own 15%</li>
<li>The remaining 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors.</li>
</ul>
Presumably that latter category includes Pennsylvania billionaire and GOP donor Jeff Yass.
Under the old ownership structure, he owned 7% of TikTok parent ByteDance. By many accounts he persuaded Donald Trump to oppose the TikTok ban when it was rushed through Congress in the spring of last year.
Perhaps in the fullness of time it will emerge that Yass was the glue on the TikTok deal &mdash; which is set to be concluded on Jan. 22.
Before we close the book on this story, it&rsquo;s worth briefly revisiting a couple of angles discussed in this space at the time the TikTok ban was moving through Congress last year&hellip;
First, the law grants sweeping powers to the president to ban apps and websites that he determines to be controlled by a &ldquo;foreign adversary&rdquo; &mdash; not just TikTok.
Donald Trump&rsquo;s future AI-and-crypto czar warned as much at the time.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/47OqFW6FVqpknTyvh1GlvC/b35c4552203a281317895017749c39a7/david_sacks_x.png" alt="David Sacks X" />
Second, the number of new TikTok users plateaued roughly two years ago. And most of those new users are folks in their 30s and 40s.
Perhaps Larry Ellison &mdash; the Oracle co-founder who&rsquo;s been the &ldquo;face&rdquo; of this deal &mdash; will come to regret his acquisition?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Because it appears the Trump administration is still enamored with the idea of a 50-year mortgage&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2wHuGSpgW684YaRZkWmnZ7/dc8d75787c13415c193a6553b92d8bad/50yr_mortgage_meme.png" alt="meme" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Second Jobs, &ldquo;Echoes from Hell&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />We heard from a handful of readers after our item <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/taco-or-world-war-iii" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in Wednesday&rsquo;s edition</a> about a record number of Americans working second and third jobs. 
&ldquo;Our family employs college students with primary school education focus (preschool, kindergarten, early grade school) as babysitters for our young boys.
&ldquo;Many of them stay on and help with our family (or with others) even after graduating with a full-time teaching position because the salary isn&rsquo;t enough to make ends meet. These young teachers earn $35,000&ndash;45,000/year and they have to pay for their own school supplies, travel, etc&hellip;
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a demanding job, underpaid and underappreciated and most have to take on a second job tutoring, babysitter, etc.&hellip; in order to survive.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;In the early &rsquo;60s the minimum wage for us high school graduates was $1.00 per hour,&rdquo; writes another.
&ldquo;To pay my way through college, I had to have as many as four part-time jobs during the school year and at least one extra part-time job plus a full-time job during the summer (refused to borrow money for college).
&ldquo;Since then inflation makes $1 per hour back then equivalent to about $13 today, which is still below the poverty level of about $17 today and why so many now work two jobs.
&ldquo;Easy to see why the birth rate is so low for married couples and why many singles are renting rooms from homeowners.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Still, for some people working more than one job is a choice.
&ldquo;I work as an insurance agent about 40&ndash;50 hours a week. This job more than covers our living expenses.
&ldquo;I also run 200-plus head of cattle mostly on the weekends. My wife and I have six rental properties as well.
&ldquo;My side hustle is grinding stumps on the side for spending money.
&ldquo;I enjoy the physical work outside the office, and it provides a nice additional source of income.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Dave's article about the 58-year hypothesis and its link to various historical events was very informative and insightful,&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-boomer-freak-out-of-2026">yesterday&rsquo;s &ldquo;Echoes from Hell&rdquo; edition of </a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-boomer-freak-out-of-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">5 Bullets</a>.
&ldquo;From an English professor's perspective, Bravo! Keep up the good work.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The section of the issue dealing with the Tet Offensive drew a couple of impassioned responses.
&ldquo;I get very tired of hearing that we lost the WAR with Vietnam; the Military did NOT lose the War; the politicians are the ones that lost the war. McNamara and his numbers math plus all the restrictions on what could be bombed was ridiculous.
&ldquo;How do I know? I was there in 1968 and flew 120 Reconnaissance missions in an RF-4C and had access to all the Top Secret information. Whether or not we should have even been in the war in the first place is another issue.&rdquo;
&ldquo;We did win Tet,&rdquo; says another, &ldquo;and had the NVA beat after Linebacker II, then gave it away in peace negotiation followed by Congress pulling the funding for our allies; 58,000 dead while many at home got rich and we created a great debt. They beat us because of TV, weak leadership and terrible war plans.&rdquo;
Dave responds: This isn&rsquo;t the first time I&rsquo;ve pointed it out, but there are interesting/disturbing parallels between Vietnam and Ukraine.
Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968 in part by touting a &ldquo;secret plan&rdquo; to end the Vietnam War.
It turned out the plan was to fight the war for four more years&hellip; then send Henry Kissinger to Paris to sign a peace deal at the start of his second term that was no different than the one he could have gotten at the start of his first.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, promised to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict on &ldquo;Day 1&rdquo; of his presidency. Yet the war still rages, with a steady pipeline of U.S. aid to Kyiv and Trump threatening to amp up the sanctions on Moscow.
For the sake of young Ukrainians being sent into the meat grinder, let&rsquo;s hope this time the war isn&rsquo;t dragged out all the way until January 2029.

fmf hero 121925

Baby Formula Blackmail

fmf-hero-121825

The Boomer Freak-Out of 2026

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />TACO or WWIII
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Either the president will back down from his declaration of a blockade against Venezuela&hellip; or World War III starts this week.
It&rsquo;s one or the other.
As you might have heard, last night Donald Trump declared &ldquo;a total and complete blockade&rdquo; of all &ldquo;sanctioned oil tankers&rdquo; entering or leaving Venezuela.
&ldquo;Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,&rdquo; he said on his Truth Social platform. &ldquo;It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For decades, if not centuries, statesmen have looked upon a blockade as an act of war.
One of the things that made <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/doubling-down-on-armageddon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962</a> so dangerous was that President John F. Kennedy imposed a U.S. naval blockade of Cuba.
But he was careful never to call it a &ldquo;blockade&rdquo; &mdash; knowing the nuclear-armed Soviet Union would see it as a declaration of war. (He used the euphemism &ldquo;quarantine&rdquo; instead.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Around the same time Trump declared the blockade last night, a sanctioned Russian oil tanker began approaching Venezuela.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6d4ZmzSW56tsD0sS0gehdZ/160313ef1adcc380a02f8c1a10dea696/dd_geopolitics_x.png" alt="Tweet" />
The Hyperion is called a &ldquo;shadow tanker&rdquo; because while it flies a Gambian flag &mdash; the better to evade U.S. sanctions &mdash; it appears to have substantial Russian ownership.
A U.S. attack on this ship would be a U.S. attack on Russia.
Your move, Mr. Trump.
For months now, financial observers have invoked the term TACO &mdash; short for &ldquo;Trump always chickens out.&rdquo; It seems Moscow just called his bluff&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile on the economic warfare front, the Trump administration is ready to impose yet another round of sanctions on Russia &ldquo;should President Vladimir Putin reject a peace agreement with Ukraine,&rdquo; according to a Bloomberg report.
It appears existing sanctions on Russia&rsquo;s &ldquo;shadow fleet&rdquo; would be stepped up &mdash; as well as sanctions on &ldquo;traders who facilitate the transactions.&rdquo; Bloomberg says Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussed the move last week with European diplomats.
Hmmm&hellip; Only last month, Bessent was being interviewed by Kristen Welker on NBC&rsquo;s Meet the Press &mdash; slamming the European Union for planning an additional round of sanctions on top of the 18 already imposed.
&ldquo;The Europeans tell me, &lsquo;Oh, we are doing our 19th sanctions package.&rsquo; In my mind, Kristen, if you're going to do something 19 times, you failed.&rdquo;
Perhaps American sanctions have some sort of magic pixie dust that European sanctions lack?
Yesterday, the price of oil sank to its lowest level since early 2021 on silly rumors that peace was about to break out between Russia and Ukraine. Today it&rsquo;s up nearly a buck to $56.10.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />DIS and AMZN and OpenAI
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />After Disney announced it would sink $1 billion into ChatGPT maker OpenAI last week, Amazon just said, &ldquo;Hold my beer.&rdquo;
We should back up a bit. Last week at the big annual gathering of the Paradigm editors at our Baltimore headquarters, trading pro Enrique Abeyta forecast what he called the &ldquo;OpenAIpocalypse.&rdquo;
Enrique has long thought that OpenAI&rsquo;s head honcho Sam Altman is all hat, no cattle. He thinks 2026 is the year it will all come crashing down &mdash; in catastrophic fashion. Enrique even compares OpenAI&rsquo;s likely fate to the collapse of Enron in 2001.
So&hellip; The big AI headline today is that Amazon is discussing a deal to invest $10 billion into OpenAI. In exchange, OpenAI would adopt Amazon&rsquo;s Trainium series of AI chips and use Amazon Web Services&rsquo; data center capacity. At least that&rsquo;s what the tech website The Information is reporting.
AMZN&rsquo;s reported $10 billion gambit comes on the heels of a mere $1 billion investment in OpenAI announced last week by The Walt Disney Company. Under the deal, ChatGPT users would get access to Disney and Marvel characters to create their own AI-generated images and videos.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Well, the devil is in the details,&rdquo; Enrique writes this morning on the daily-feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app.
&ldquo;Now it has come out that OpenAi is paying DIS not in cash, but with warrants to buy OpenAi stock.
&ldquo;Those are likely well in the money and Disney would only put the $1 billion investment in IF they were so &mdash; in fact &mdash; while Disney WOULD be investing $1 billion into OpenAi, they likely would be making much more money than that.
&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t believe the headlines!&rdquo;
The reality check is having zero impact on DIS stock this week &mdash; trading near a one-month high. Meanwhile AMZN is up three-quarters of a percent a day after its own OpenAI announcement. Go figure&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The big market story once again today is&hellip; silver. The white metal is up $2.82 at last check &mdash; a whopping 4.4% &mdash; to $66.49.
&ldquo;Mr. Slammy&rdquo; &mdash; the mysterious forces in New York and London that can depress the silver price &mdash; is nowhere to be found today after another round of furious buying in Shanghai.
Gold, meanwhile, is tightening its grip on the $4,300 level &mdash; the bid now $4,338.
The major U.S. stock indexes are all in the red &mdash; the Dow holding up best, the Nasdaq faring worst. The S&amp;P 500 is down nearly two-thirds of a percent at 6,757. If that holds by day&rsquo;s end, it&rsquo;ll be the first sub-6,800 close since Nov. 25.
Crypto appears stuck where it was 48 hours ago &mdash; Bitcoin under $87,000 and Ethereum under $2,900.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />About Those Job Numbers&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Hustle or desperation? The number of Americans working more than one job is now its highest in records going back more than 30 years.
Digging a little deeper into the government job numbers released yesterday, we see that 9.3 million Americans reported working two or more jobs last month &mdash; 5.7% of all job-holders.
&ldquo;Only in the mid-1990s, when the workforce was considerably smaller than it is today, was the share of multiple job holders higher, peaking at 6.5% in November 1996,&rdquo; writes Felix Richter at Statista.
&ldquo;But whereas in 1996, around two-thirds of multiple jobholders were not college-educated and presumably worked in low-wage occupations, half of those working more than one job now do hold a college degree, indicating that even an advanced degree no longer guarantees a job that pays well enough to make ends meet.&rdquo;
The number of multiple job-holders in November of 2025 is substantially higher than it was in November 2019, ahead of the pandemic &mdash; as well November 2008, the nadir of the financial crisis.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7fBIw5dc6VWQkCRmLYFE2I/54065bbf89202a11fbb6a53dbc96976a/multiple_job_chart.png" alt="multiple jobs -chart" />
&nbsp;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, even by the new 2020s standard of what constitutes a healthy job market&hellip; job creation is looking punk.
Time was that it took 150,000 or even 200,000 new jobs every month for the economy to keep up with population growth.
But population growth has slowed to a crawl. The border has been effectively closed since last spring, illegal migrants already here are being deported and the native-born working-age population is stagnant.
Experts like demographer Neil Howe and Bianco Research founder Jim Bianco say the &ldquo;breakeven&rdquo; number of new jobs needed to keep up with population growth is now perhaps as little as 30,000.
But poring over the numbers released yesterday&hellip; the average for the last six months is less than 17,000. Not great.
That said, the Bureau of Labor Statistics acknowledges that because most of its personnel were furloughed for 43 days during the partial government shutdown, its data for October and November might be subject to &ldquo;slightly higher than usual standard errors.&rdquo;
Not that it was ever super-reliable to begin with, but that&rsquo;s a story for another day&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />TikTok: Still Not In U.S. Hands
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For the record&hellip; TikTok ownership still hasn&rsquo;t passed into American hands.
Maybe you don&rsquo;t remember now&hellip; but the social media platform used by half of the U.S. population was in danger of disappearing earlier this year.
In fact, it did disappear <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/two-executive-orders-trump-must-sign-now/#2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">for a few hours on the eve of Donald Trump&rsquo;s inauguration</a> &mdash; thanks to a law that overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress last year and was signed by Joe Biden. Under the law, TikTok&rsquo;s Chinese owners had to sell its U.S. assets to U.S. buyers.
Upon taking office, Donald Trump gave TikTok a 75-day reprieve to find a buyer. Then came another reprieve. And another&hellip;
As you might recall, an American consortium led by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison was all set to take over. Trump himself made the announcement on September 20. The whole thing was supposed to be buttoned up when Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of October.
But it wasn&rsquo;t to be. Beijing still looks upon TikTok as valuable leverage in ongoing talks with Washington about a host of issues including trade.
The most recent deadline was Dec. 16 &mdash; yesterday. And now it&rsquo;s been pushed back to Jan. 23 of next year.
"We're just standing by and waiting to see what happens," says Frank McCourt &mdash; the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and part of the U.S. consortium.
"But if the moment arrives,&rdquo; he tells the BBC, &ldquo;we're prepared to move forward... we've raised the capital to buy it &mdash; we'll see."
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Silver Hoarding
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />On the subject of silver hoarding broached in Monday&rsquo;s edition, a reader writes&hellip;
&ldquo;Back when the Hunt brothers attempted to corner the silver market I understand they had purchased a lot (tonnes) of physical silver.
&ldquo;When this was discovered, who advised, or &lsquo;required&rsquo; them to get rid of their vast holdings? Do they still have possession of it?
&ldquo;If they were required to divest themselves, how was this accomplished, and wouldn't that have caused the price of silver to decrease by dumping all of that physical silver? Or did they simply offer it to their like-minded &lsquo;friends&rsquo; like JP Morgan and others who may have been happy to &lsquo;take it off their hands&rsquo; as an investment?
&ldquo;I recall buying silver dollars through the mail for $2&ndash;3 each in the early &rsquo;90s.&rdquo;
Dave responds: What wrecked the Hunt brothers&rsquo; attempt to corner the silver market in 1980 was that the rules of the game were suddenly changed. The Comex changed the margin requirements on silver futures.
That&rsquo;s the short story. Colleague Adam Sharp told the story <a href="https://dailyreckoning.com/the-untold-story-behind-silvers-30x-move/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in more detail</a> over the summer at The Daily Reckoning. (Spoiler alert: It wasn&rsquo;t all about the Hunt brothers&hellip;)

fmf hero 121725

TACO or World War III

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />2026: Abundance, Crypto and Volatility Collide
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Last week in Baltimore, we put Paradigm&rsquo;s best minds in one room with a single mission: Figure out what actually matters for investors in 2026.
Not the safe consensus calls. Not the recycled talking points. The real fault lines &mdash; the ideas that make people uncomfortable before they make money.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6PIrOMPwzVRyxNTyt2wPk7/c31ec67cc95f28059cf574aca8774e29/paradigm-meeting.jpg" alt="Belvedere Meeting" />
Paradigm&rsquo;s team at the historic Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore (Dec. 11, 2025)
What followed was not a polite roundtable. It was a series of bold, sometimes unsettling forecasts that challenged almost every assumption Wall Street is leaning on today.
Here are three that stood out &mdash; and why they matter more than you might think&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Paradigm&rsquo;s science-and-technology investor Ray Blanco flipped a familiar narrative on its head. Rather than focusing on collapse or crisis, Ray outlined a year defined by abundance.
One of his boldest calls: a renewed space race in 2026, what he describes as America&rsquo;s next &ldquo;Sputnik moment.&rdquo; The driver this time isn&rsquo;t nationalism, but infrastructure &mdash; specifically data centers moving into orbit.
Projects like Nvidia&rsquo;s reported &ldquo;Starcloud&rdquo; concept are early examples of what Ray believes is coming next: orbital compute powered by continuous solar energy, reduced cooling costs and structural advantages that Earth-bound systems simply can&rsquo;t match.
If it works, the implications ripple through AI, energy and national security.
Ray&rsquo;s second prediction could be even more transformative. He&rsquo;s tracking developments that point toward a functional cure for Type 1 diabetes. &ldquo;Not treatment. Not management. A cure,&rdquo; he emphasizes.
Ray is watching companies like Vertex (VRTX) and Sana Biotechnology (SANA) closely, with a preference for Sana&rsquo;s &ldquo;superior&rdquo; approach, which aims to retrain the immune system rather than suppress it. If successful, the medical &mdash; and market &mdash; consequences would be profound.
The third pillar of Ray&rsquo;s outlook is macro&hellip; and counterintuitive. He believes the economy is drifting toward deflation through abundance, not collapse. AI and robotics increase productivity. Reshoring and tariffs eventually stabilize supply chains.
Meanwhile, demographics quietly do the heavy lifting. An aging population, low birth rates and net-negative immigration reduce long-term demand across housing, health care and consumer goods.
Ray points to the Great Deflation of 1873&ndash;1896 as historical context &mdash; a period when prices fell for decades even as innovation accelerated and living standards improved.
The takeaway: Deflation doesn&rsquo;t have to be destructive. Sometimes it&rsquo;s the price of progress.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Chris Cimorelli, AKA Mr. 10X, zoomed out &mdash; then drilled down. His starting premise was simple: &ldquo;Bitcoin is the best trade of the last century.&rdquo;
But his real focus isn&rsquo;t Bitcoin itself. It&rsquo;s Bitcoin Cash (BCH) &mdash; a 2017 blockchain fork designed to preserve Bitcoin&rsquo;s original purpose as peer-to-peer electronic cash. &ldquo;Same 21 million cap,&rdquo; Chris explains. &ldquo;Same DNA. Different execution.&rdquo;
Today, Bitcoin Cash hovers around $500 and sits just outside the crypto spotlight. Chris thinks that changes in 2026.
His thesis is that institutional investors &mdash; already stretched trying to gain meaningful crypto exposure &mdash; won&rsquo;t be able to ignore BCH much longer. Especially if Bitcoin itself continues higher.
In his framework, a move in Bitcoin toward $150,000 creates a powerful opportunity for Bitcoin Cash. At minimum, he sees the potential for BCH to triple or quadruple. In a more aggressive scenario, he sees room for significantly more upside.
His blunt forecast: &ldquo;2026: BCH 10X.&rdquo;
Whether or not that exact number materializes, Chris&rsquo; core argument is that Bitcoin&rsquo;s evolution into digital gold leaves room &mdash; and demand &mdash; for Bitcoin&rsquo;s blockchain.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For his part, Paradigm&rsquo;s chart hound Greg Guenthner asked: &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the volatility?&rdquo;
His answer: It&rsquo;s coming. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re somewhere in the middle of the AI bubble,&rdquo; Greg says. &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t mean it pops tomorrow. But it does mean the ride gets rougher.&rdquo;
After years of relatively smooth upward momentum, he sees volatility returning in force &mdash; especially in the middle of 2026. Greg is watching Q2 and Q3 closely. A brewing malaise on Main Street and midterm election seasonality all point toward &ldquo;volatility spikes.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7hEmrXU7pR5GJbJMcHU891/a8e7847f542a6b8e0b94ec107ac2bc0b/paradigm-meeting-2.jpg" alt="Gunner Presentation" />
Greg Guenthner&rsquo;s prize-winning presentation: &ldquo;Polls look bad for Team Trump &mdash; Ohio and Iowa just flipped&rdquo; 
Greg highlights, in particular, structural changes at the Federal Reserve, noting a new Fed chair plus a shifting mandate could alter how markets price risk.
His bottom line for investors: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about to get weird.&rdquo; Stocks may still trend higher overall, but Greg doesn&rsquo;t expect a straight line. Instead, he sees a target-rich environment &mdash; one where volatility creates opportunity for traders willing to stay flexible.
Bonus: Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta reinforced Greg&rsquo;s point with a history lesson. During the 1998 tech boom, he notes, the Nasdaq index suffered multiple corrections of 10% or more &mdash; driven by the Asian Financial Crisis and the LTCM collapse &mdash; even as it marched toward its eventual peak.
The lesson? Big secular bull markets don&rsquo;t move in straight lines. They shake out weak hands first. And 2026, if our Baltimore summit is correct, will have plenty of thrills and spills.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Labor Market Loses Momentum
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />November&rsquo;s jobs report points to a cooling labor market. The unemployment rate increased to 4.6%, up from 4.4% in September and well above January&rsquo;s 4.0% level. It&rsquo;s the highest unemployment reading, in fact, since September 2021.
A wider gauge of joblessness, which captures discouraged workers and those forced into part-time roles, also moved higher, reaching 8.7% &mdash; a level not seen since August 2021.
The data also incorporated delayed figures from October, when total payrolls declined by 105,000 jobs after a surprise increase the prior month. Most of that drop came from the public sector, where government employment fell sharply as previously announced layoffs took effect. Government payrolls continued to edge lower in November.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics warned that fallout from the government shutdown is still affecting official numbers, raising the likelihood of uneven data in the months ahead.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />All three major U.S. stock indexes are in the red so far today. The Big Board&rsquo;s down most (-0.43%) to 48,215 while the S&amp;P 500 is down 0.30% to 6,795. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, meanwhile, is down slightly to 23,050.
As for commodities, crude&rsquo;s at its lowest level since 2021 &mdash; down 2.25% to $55.50 for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate. Similarly, precious metals have also slipped into red territory: Gold&rsquo;s price has slipped to $4,335 per ounce while silver&rsquo;s down 0.20% to $63.45.
Crypto, on the other hand, is attempting to scrape back some losses. Flagship crypto Bitcoin is up 2.25% to $87,780, and Ethereum&rsquo;s up 0.65%, just under $3,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The First AI Model Trained in Space
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Starcloud says it has trained an AI model in orbit for the first time &mdash; a proof-of-concept that some machine learning might eventually run off-planet.
Last month, Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud launched a satellite carrying an Nvidia H100 GPU, a chip roughly far more powerful than any compute previously sent into orbit. Once deployed, the satellite trained NanoGPT, a model created by OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy, using the complete works of Shakespeare.
The result? A model that speaks in Shakespearean English &mdash; and, more importantly, one that proves large-scale AI training can happen out of this world.
Starcloud didn&rsquo;t stop there. Its Starcloud-1 satellite is now also running Gemma, Google&rsquo;s open large language model based on Gemini, marking &ldquo;the first time in history that an LLM has been run on a high-powered Nvidia GPU in outer space,&rdquo; according to CNBC.
&ldquo;Greetings, Earthlings! Or, as I prefer to think of you &mdash; a fascinating collection of blue and green,&rdquo; the satellite wrote, reports CNBC. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s see what wonders this view of your world holds.&rdquo;
The company&rsquo;s ambition is bigger than clever demos. Starcloud wants to show that space can support full-scale data centers as power grids, water systems and permitting processes increasingly constrain terrestrial facilities.
Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston tells CNBC orbital data centers could run at a fraction of the energy cost.
&ldquo;Anything you can do in a terrestrial data center, I&rsquo;m expecting to be able to be done in space,&rdquo; Johnston says. &ldquo;And the reason we would do it is purely because of the constraints we&rsquo;re facing on energy terrestrially.&rdquo;
The International Energy Agency, for instance, projects global data-center electricity demand will more than double by 2030.
Johnston adds Starcloud-1&rsquo;s ability to run Gemma shows that complex models can operate reliably in orbit.
&ldquo;This very powerful, very parameter-dense model is living on our satellite,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We can query it, and it will respond in the same way that when you query a chat from a database on Earth, it will give you a very sophisticated response.&rdquo;
In a statement to CNBC, Tris Warkentin, product director at Google DeepMind, says &ldquo;seeing Gemma run in the harsh environment of space is a testament to the flexibility and robustness of open models.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />How SpaceX Plans to Pay for Orbit
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />While startups like Starcloud test what&rsquo;s possible, SpaceX is laying the financial groundwork to scale orbital infrastructure.
According to Reuters, SpaceX has opened a secondary share sale valuing the company at roughly $800 billion, as it prepares for a potential IPO as early as 2026. In a Dec. 12 letter to shareholders, CFO Bret Johnsen says the company is positioning itself for a public listing.
&ldquo;We are preparing the company for a possible IPO in 2026,&rdquo; says Johnsen. &ldquo;Whether it actually happens, when it happens and at what valuation are still highly uncertain, but the thinking is that if we execute brilliantly and the markets cooperate, a public offering could raise a significant amount of capital.&rdquo;
That capital, Johnsen says, would help ramp Starship&rsquo;s flight rate and support projects including &ldquo;deploy artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in space,&rdquo; alongside moon and Mars ambitions.
But the driver behind SpaceX&rsquo;s valuation is arguably Starlink. Reuters reports SpaceX expects about $15 billion in revenue in 2025, rising to as much as $24 billion in 2026, with most of that coming from Starlink&rsquo;s satellite-internet business.
Musk reinforced that point himself, writing on X that &ldquo;valuation increments are a function of progress with Starship and Starlink and securing global direct-to-cell spectrum that greatly increases our [market].&rdquo;
Put differently, Starlink&rsquo;s cash flow is what makes Starship &mdash; and future orbital infrastructure &mdash; economically credible. Starship may enable space-based computing. But it&rsquo;s Starlink&rsquo;s scale, revenue and global reach that justify the investment needed to get there.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />The Definition of &ldquo;Slop&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In November, Amazon Prime Video began testing AI-generated video recaps, billed as a slick way for viewers to catch up on major plot points without rewatching entire seasons. 
Think &ldquo;Previously on&hellip;&rdquo; but with machine efficiency and cinematic polish. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit, as it turns out.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5qYVSfUqTuRXabE4Zb5ORO/6dfe496483bac1dce63dadc7216f2dbc/verge_x.png" alt="The Verge tweet" />
Welp, that didn&rsquo;t age well&hellip; 
Fans quickly noticed the AI recap for Amazon Prime&rsquo;s hit show Fallout Season One seemed only loosely inspired by the source material.
One scene featuring Walt Goggins&rsquo; character Ghoul, for instance, was labeled a &ldquo;1950s flashback,&rdquo; presumably because it looked retro. But Fallout fans know the integral difference between the show&rsquo;s midcentury aesthetic and its setting: year 2077.
For newcomers to the series, it was confusing at best and misleading at worst. Not long after fans pointed out this and other inconsistencies online, the AI recap quietly vanished.
This episode now joins a growing list of AI run amok. Apple paused an AI notification tool earlier this year after it repeatedly mangled news alerts, for example. And Google&rsquo;s AI Overviews have been mocked for confidently wrong answers.
The machines, it seems, are excellent at sounding sure. Less so at accuracy.
In related news, Merriam-Webster crowned the word &ldquo;slop&rdquo; its 2025 Word of the Year, citing its growing use to describe low-quality, mass-produced AI content.
Timely.

fmf-hero-121625

2026 Preview: Abundance and Volatility

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Silver Fantasies
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The bull market in silver has reached the stage where weird rumors come from nowhere and take over the internet.
Such as this post on X last Thursday&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5BF6cqL21N54KIWJCnkvhE/d9d59ba1cfc0769c69690298197a4a4a/fmf_121525_tweet1.png" alt="Eric Yeung Tweet" />
If you&rsquo;re a long-term follower of the precious metals markets, you know what a sea change this would be.
JPMorgan Chase inherited a massive short position in silver when it took over a collapsing Bear Stearns in 2008. JPM has been the b&ecirc;te noire of precious metals bulls ever since &mdash; blamed for every downdraft in gold and silver prices.
Alas, when you go to the link provided by the X poster, you get&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/66hQQkzl1UDyTGwGFfIkFF/67beec4825ae3aeafe800322c4139188/fmf_121525_404.png" alt="404" />
A Google search for &ldquo;Is JPMorgan hoarding silver&rdquo; turns up the following result&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3WlT9B9FyBgc8lCPkwOzuf/9419b19c11172c065fc5d9ab0d02e2bd/fmf_121525_search.png" alt="Search Result" />
But clicking on the link results in the same 404 message.
On Reddit, someone posted an annotated screengrab that appears to be the beginning of the article before it was taken down&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3vzme2XwDWFOM5TfrXVBAP/060e5e54b9c1bcb9ce5635cdab8bee41/fmf_121525_article.png" alt="Annotated Article" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />So what can we make of this?
The Economic Times is India&rsquo;s leading English-language business newspaper. It covers South Asia thoroughly. We&rsquo;ve cited it now and then when addressing matters in that part of the world, along with India&rsquo;s role in the BRICS grouping of countries.
As far as we can tell, no other mainstream outlet picked up the silver story. There&rsquo;s no reason to believe The Economic Times has any special insight into the activities of JPM compared with any other mainstream outlet. And for whatever reason, The Economic Times removed the story from its site no later than Saturday.
Verdict: There&rsquo;s nothing to the &ldquo;JPM is hoarding silver&rdquo; story. But there&rsquo;s also nothing stopping people on the internet from latching onto it to draw attention to themselves. (And the example we started this bullet with is just one of many.) Reader beware.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In the meantime, silver is starting to recover its steep losses Friday.
To whatever extent JPM and other shadowy forces depress the prices of precious metals, they&rsquo;re losing their leverage.
In the last two or three years, those forces acquired a popular nickname &mdash; &ldquo;Mr. Slammy.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Did you enjoy Mr. Slammy&rsquo;s performance on Friday?&rdquo; writes Paradigm&rsquo;s recovering investment banker Sean Ring.
&ldquo;He smashed silver as hard as he could, sending the devil&rsquo;s metal from its high of $64.65 down to $60.82, before closing at $61.92. He does this the best on Friday evenings, when the Chinese are home, fast asleep.
&ldquo;Amusing. Specifically, it&rsquo;s amusing how Mr. Slammy makes it so much easier for those same Chinese to come in Sunday night and send silver back to $63.75, where it trades as I write.&rdquo;
Sean sums up the state of play like this in <a href="https://rudeawakening.info/posts/can-miners-double-again" target="_blank" rel="noopener">today&rsquo;s </a><a href="https://rudeawakening.info/posts/can-miners-double-again" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rude Awakening</a>: &ldquo;the U.S. bullion banks have lost their power to crush the metals futures markets because there&rsquo;s always a buyer where the sun rises first.&rdquo;
Since Sean&rsquo;s dispatch this morning, silver has pulled back a bit &mdash; but it&rsquo;s still holding the line on $63. Gold, on the other hand, has lost its grip on $4,300.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, the major U.S. stock indexes are having trouble picking themselves up from their own Friday smackdown.
The S&amp;P 500 is holding up best &mdash; down 0.15% and still above 6,800. The Dow is down a bit more steeply and the Nasdaq&rsquo;s losses are steepest, a little over a third of a percent.
The recent buzz about tech valuations will likely take a back seat later this week to economic data: The Bureau of Labor Statistics is preparing two major reports delayed by the &ldquo;partial government shutdown.&rdquo; The November job figures arrive tomorrow, and the official inflation numbers on Thursday.
It seems the tech gloom has spread into crypto big-time: Bitcoin has sunk to $86,262 while Ethereum has cracked beneath $3,000 again. That said, we&rsquo;re not approaching last month&rsquo;s lows &mdash; at least not yet.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Global Shipping Free-for-All
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />At $56.63, oil prices have sunk to two-month lows even though &ldquo;we are now speeding toward a kinetic war involving seaborne commercial shipping,&rdquo; tweets the military analyst Will Schryver.
As perhaps you heard, U.S. forces seized an oil tanker last Wednesday off the coast of Venezuela &mdash; sanctions enforcement, said the Trump administration. The ship is on its way to Houston now; no word about the fate of the crew, other than they didn&rsquo;t put up any resistance.
&ldquo;Threats of more seizures have now left tankers &mdash; loaded with about 11 million barrels of oil and fuel &mdash; stuck in Venezuelan waters and fearing to venture further,&rdquo; reports the Reuters newswire.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Turns out this is not a one-off, and it&rsquo;s not all about Venezuela. 
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that last month, U.S. special forces raided a ship several hundred miles off the coast of Sri Lanka. It had departed China, bound for Iran.
The paper cited unnamed U.S. officials who said the ship was carrying &ldquo;dual-use items, with both civilian and military applications.&rdquo;
Meanwhile, Iran seized a ship in the Gulf of Oman over the weekend &mdash; claiming it was smuggling Iranian fuel. No details about the ship&rsquo;s registry or destination.
Last month, Iran also seized a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker in the Gulf of Oman. It took the cargo and released the crew. At that time, U.S. Central Command put out a testy statement calling the seizure &ldquo;a blatant violation of international law, undermining freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.&rdquo;
We don&rsquo;t know where this all ends &mdash; but the proposition that commercial shipping can flow around the world unimpeded? It appears to be something we can no longer take for granted.
The new state of play might be having an impact on shipping stocks. They jumped impressively from mid-October until the start of December &mdash; only to stall out this month.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Oh, passenger air travel also appears to be at risk &mdash; at least in the vicinity of Venezuela, anyway.
&ldquo;A JetBlue flight from the small Caribbean nation of Cura&ccedil;ao halted its ascent to avoid colliding with a U.S. Air Force refueling tanker on Friday,&rdquo; reports The Associated Press. The plane was headed to New York-JFK.
&ldquo;We almost had a midair collision up here,&rdquo; said the JetBlue pilot. &ldquo;They passed directly in our flight path&hellip; They don&rsquo;t have their transponder turned on, it&rsquo;s outrageous.&rdquo;
Air traffic control agreed: &ldquo;It has been outrageous with the unidentified aircraft within our air.&rdquo;
According to The New York Times, a day after the near-collision, air traffic controllers in Cura&ccedil;ao told three pilots to keep an eye out for unidentified aircraft flying in the area &mdash; presumably referring to U.S. military aircraft whose transponders are turned off.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Update: Data Centers in Space
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />All of a sudden, &ldquo;data centers in space&rdquo; is moving from the realm of the hypothetical to the almost, kinda-sorta real.
About six weeks ago, we noted that orbiting data centers powered by the sun would solve the growing problem of earthbound data centers competing for scarce electricity and driving up everyday consumers&rsquo; power bills.
Several startups are pursuing the idea &mdash; as are several tech bigwigs like Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt and of course Elon Musk.
Musk&rsquo;s SpaceX is uniquely positioned to pursue the concept: His Starlink network of satellites already deliver internet access across the globe.
From there, he plans a new generation of satellites that can accommodate even greater speed and more bandwidth. Dozens of these satellites will be deployed with every Starship rocket launch next year.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But the scale of Musk&rsquo;s ambitions came into view only three days ago &mdash; when SpaceX confirmed it has an eye toward going public next year.
Bloomberg reports the IPO would raise more than $30 billion &mdash; valuing the firm around $1.5 trillion.
&ldquo;If executed,&rdquo; says Paradigm tech-investing pro Ray Blanco, &ldquo;this would be the largest IPO in history &mdash; surpassing even Saudi Aramco&rsquo;s $29 billion offering in 2019.&rdquo;
How would SpaceX put the money to use?
In a letter to employees and shareholders, SpaceX CFO Bret Johnson said the IPO &ldquo;enables us to ramp Starship to an insane flight rate, deploy AI data centers in space, build Moonbase Alpha and send uncrewed and crewed missions to Mars &mdash; ultimately increasing the probability of making life multiplanetary in our lifetimes.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Forget Mars for the moment. The lion&rsquo;s share of the IPO money will go to &ldquo;a new generation of space-based data centers,&rdquo; Ray tells us.
That&rsquo;s where the need is right now &mdash; &ldquo;extending Starlink's role from connectivity provider into core infrastructure for cloud and AI workloads delivered from orbit.&rdquo;
Ray has a 5-year-old boy. &ldquo;By the time he's 10, those satellites won't just route phone calls. They'll run AI models powering his education and entertainment.
&ldquo;By the time he's my age, the space economy will be larger than today's tech industry.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In light of California&rsquo;s loss of population since 2020&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2UYZH2zwKjW5j9K70tRzrR/aa0e0c7771a31081945174057c4269dc/fmf_121525_meme.jpg" alt="Meme" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Silver Gains
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Due to silver's continued growth, what is the best way to profit if you hold actual Silver Eagle coins and where do you go to sell and make a profit?&rdquo; a reader writes.
&ldquo;I am sure there are many investors like myself that invested in silver and gold years ago as a safety net. I am getting ready to retire, thus my question.
&ldquo;Thank you for your input &mdash; love reading your articles!&rdquo;
Dave responds: Hmmm&hellip; At the risk of copping out, the answer is going to be different for everyone.
The answer that makes the most sense to me comes from legendary commodities investor Jim Rogers &mdash; when he was asked in 2020 whether gold was in a bubble. (At the time, gold was still oscillating around $2,000.)
&ldquo;Gold may well turn into a bubble,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I hope it doesn't, because if it turns into a bubble, I'll have to sell it and I never want to sell it. I want my children to have my gold and silver someday."
Five years since that interview, Rogers is age 83. By now his two daughters would be in their late teens and early 20s. A Google News search turns up no evidence he&rsquo;s selling!
With Rogers&rsquo; guidance in mind&hellip; your physical precious metal is what you keep 1) in the event of severe societal breakdown and 2) to hand on to the next generation.
In the latter instance, you don&rsquo;t care about price fluctuations day-to-day or even year-to-year; you just want your kids and grandkids protected because they too will experience episodes of monetary debasement like the 1970s, 2000s and 2020s.
Hopefully you&rsquo;re in a position to hold on to your physical metal for those purposes &mdash; while your metals ETFs and mining stocks are what you can draw on for retirement income.
Good luck &mdash; and congratulations on your gains to date!

fmf 121525 hero

Silver Fantasies

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Silver Squeeze of 2025 (Update)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Silver has officially broken out again, and depending on which charts you&rsquo;re looking at, the next target is either $71 or $77,&rdquo; colleague Sean Ring writes in our sister e-letter The Rude Awakening.
Now that the white metal has broken through $60 for the first time, the mainstream is starting to notice.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And the mainstream takes are oh-so-predictable. 
&ldquo;A mix of forces are boosting silver, including the weakened dollar, tariff politics and supply shortages,&rdquo; says The Washington Post. &ldquo;Especially critical in recent weeks, though, is the growing expectation that the Federal Reserve will announce another rate cut this Wednesday as the U.S. economy continues to slow down. Analysts say that&rsquo;s likely to further pressure the dollar lower while lifting silver &mdash; a classic safe-haven asset &mdash; even higher.&rdquo;
The BBC: &ldquo;Investors tend to move money into precious metals like gold and silver as interest rates come down and the U.S. dollar weakens. The U.S. central bank is widely expected to cut its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday.&rdquo;
Seriously? Tariffs? The Fed?
The Fed embarks on a rate-cutting cycle every few years and there&rsquo;s almost zero correlation with the price of precious metals. The Fed cut rates steadily during the second half of 2019 and the price stayed mired under $20.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;When the D.C. deep state elite start talking about a precious metal move, it means that they must be feeling the seismicity,&rdquo; observes Paradigm&rsquo;s metals-and-mining authority Byron King.
The reality is that this move has been &ldquo;decades in the making, with the kickoff under Biden and grabbing Russian assets.&rdquo;
For sure. We can&rsquo;t say it often enough: Freezing the dollar assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank in 2022 touched off a scramble for gold among the world&rsquo;s central banks. As Jim Rickards often reminds us, &ldquo;Gold is a physical nondigital asset that cannot be stolen, frozen or seized provided it is in safe storage.&rdquo;
It was inevitable silver would catch up to gold&rsquo;s move &mdash; and then surpass it. That&rsquo;s how it always goes during an epic precious-metals rally.
Byron points out another factor that files under the mainstream radar &mdash; the industrialization of China. All those solar panels they&rsquo;re making for the rest of the world? They need silver!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Those are long-term factors, however. In the short term, a &ldquo;silver squeeze&rdquo; is still underway.
We described the dynamics <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/silver-rumors">last Thursday</a> &mdash; silver being loaded on cargo jets for transport out of London and into New York and Shanghai. Demand for physical metal is catching up with the demand for silver futures contracts on the Comex in New York. Lease rates on physical silver are through the roof.
Six days later, there&rsquo;s no sign of the squeeze letting up.
&ldquo;A steady, orderly rise would tell us the market is adjusting to new fundamentals,&rdquo; says Sean Ring. &ldquo;But this isn&rsquo;t orderly. It smells like fear. It feels like a squeeze. And it carries the subtle warning that the plumbing behind the scenes is clogging up&hellip;
&ldquo;Silver lease rates are still elevated versus normal, with very short tenors reportedly in the midteens to several tens of percent annualized, compared with a long-run &lsquo;normal&rsquo; well under 1% per year.
&ldquo;Deliverable inventories on major exchanges are shrinking at a pace we haven&rsquo;t seen since the 2011 squeeze. And the usual liquidity providers are stepping back because the spreads are too unpredictable to quote safely.
&ldquo;When a bullion bank bleeds, it doesn&rsquo;t show up on CNBC. It shows up in the market microstructure. Banks that normally dominate the market start behaving like they&rsquo;re afraid of taking the wrong side of the trade.
&ldquo;If silver keeps rising in this jagged, disorderly pattern, someone is getting crushed behind the curtain. And once a bank is cornered, the problem is no longer price volatility, but systemic risk.&rdquo;
Word.
Back to the chart action: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll stick with $71 for now, and there it&rsquo;ll take a breather,&rdquo; Sean says. &ldquo;Once silver gets watered and fed, $102 is the next long-term price target.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Bubble Babble
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> When The New York Times frets on its front page about an AI bubble, you can be confident there&rsquo;s still ample time before the bubble bursts.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/440S92jYzxvIPKPvDir5VE/f9d4a781f9a0bf224139278a39f712a6/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Share prices of some AI companies have risen dramatically in a short time,&rdquo; says the article accompanying that headline &mdash; &ldquo;and tech companies are spending billions to build data centers and microchip plants to power the boom.
&ldquo;While investors and analysts see good reasons to justify the exuberance behind the nearly 50% increase in the S&amp;P 500 over the past two years, some warn that current valuations still rest on a big bet on the future.&rdquo;
You want to know when the AI bubble will burst?
When the mainstream stops publishing articles like this and adopts the narrative that the AI economy has put the stock market on a permanently higher trajectory and trees grow to the sky.
We&rsquo;re not there yet.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Ironically, the Times article acknowledges as much &mdash; invoking the December 1996 remark by Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan about &ldquo;irrational exuberance&rdquo; in internet stocks.
Greenspan wasn&rsquo;t wrong &mdash; but he was early, and you wouldn&rsquo;t have wanted to bet against the dot-coms. The S&amp;P 500 doubled in the three years following Greenspan&rsquo;s warning. Only then came the inevitable collapse.
As John Maynard Keynes once said, &ldquo;The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In fact, if you want to use the dot-com bubble and bust as your guide, there&rsquo;s still a long way to go.
Here&rsquo;s a chart of the Nasdaq composite index from Bespoke Investment Group. It shows the dot-com rally then and the AI rally now.
The starting point then was the release of the Netscape Navigator web browser and the starting point now is the release of ChatGPT 3.5.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6ktljmbXWsV4WQlHo1rqXu/bea025e39e81033059678e51a7166a3a/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The parallels &mdash; at least so far &mdash; are eerie. Notice the dip in the red line coinciding with the market&rsquo;s 5% pullback last month. There was a similar pullback in late 1997 coinciding with a currency crisis in Asia.
If past is prologue, a steeper pullback is on the horizon next summer and fall. Back in 1998 the catalyst was the Russian government defaulting on its debt &mdash; which took down the U.S. hedge fund Long Term Capital Management.
And then comes the blowoff top in 2027.
No guarantees, but that&rsquo;s how it&rsquo;s shaken out for the last three years. We&rsquo;ll check in on this chart from time to time during 2026&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for today, Mr. Market is marking time until the Federal Reserve makes its next call on interest rates.
As mentioned yesterday, nearly everyone expects the Fed to trim the fed funds rate another quarter percentage point this afternoon. The drama lies in how much dissent there is among the members of the Fed&rsquo;s Open Market Committee, and how Fed Chair Jerome Powell spins that dissent during his post-decision press conference. (As always, we&rsquo;ll follow up tomorrow with the help of Jim Rickards.)
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is pancake flat relative to yesterday&rsquo;s close, sitting at 6,841. The Dow is slightly in the green, the Nasdaq slightly in the red.
While silver continues to hold the line on $60, gold is struggling to hold onto the $4,200 level. As for digital nondollar assets, Bitcoin remains over $92,000 and Ethereum has climbed over $3,300.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Venezuela: Action Imminent?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Oil has sunk under $58 for the first time this month, even as it appears Washington is closer to making some sort of military move on Venezuela.
After several days docked in the Virgin Islands, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford has made its way back toward Venezuela.
Yesterday, two U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets were spotted by flight trackers deep inside the Gulf of Venezuela &mdash; perhaps trying to light up Venezuelan radar. The Pentagon is spinning it as a &ldquo;routine training flight.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2sVyvRiCPC5Z9glFyed0Ta/2878c778c6df1e54b9d44a63e1f75d2d/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
As we laid out last month, an American regime-change op in Venezuela has <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs">nothing to do with drugs</a> and everything to do with oil and other natural resources. As we also said last month, public support for regime change is <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/only-3x-in-market-history#3">sorely lacking</a>. And unlike in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, there&rsquo;s been no sustained propaganda campaign to generate such support.
Trump is refusing to rule out a ground invasion, but as long as support remains lacking, it seems unlikely.
More likely are other options he&rsquo;s said to have reviewed &mdash; sending in troops to capture airfields and oil wells, or perhaps dispatching special forces to capture or kill President Nicolas Maduro.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And then what?
&ldquo;In my estimation, it is an inexplicably stupid and highly risk-laden undertaking to try to insert SOFs [special operations] and Marines,&rdquo; tweets the military analyst William Schryver.
&ldquo;And, notwithstanding the fact that Venezuela is a minor military power, they do possess a handful of potent tools capable of inflicting damage against the U.S. Navy and U.S. aircraft.&rdquo;
Even if no harm comes to U.S. troops, &ldquo;a military intervention in the region is likely to have the opposite effect as intended &mdash; it could spur a massive refugee crisis, elevate anarchic narco groups and tempt China to quietly intervene to make Washington waste its time,&rdquo; says Curt Mills, editor of The American Conservative.
Sounds a little like Libya &mdash; where Barack Obama pulled off regime change in 2011, deposing Col. Muammar Gaddafi. It unleashed a massive refugee crisis in Europe and to this day there are still rival governments fighting for control of Libya&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Thought for the Day
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Ahead of today&rsquo;s Fed decision and the power struggle over Fed policy, a timely reminder&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/17EicUqc7j7bzMkNs4VrdM/eed96b768173c17a04bec1d201c5ed00/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Canadian Liquor, Tax-Resisting Heroine
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Alberta liquor isn't fully privatized,&rdquo; writes a reader from Canada&rsquo;s energy capital after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-witch-doctors">yesterday&rsquo;s </a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-witch-doctors">5 Bullets</a>.
&ldquo;We have AGLC &mdash; Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis. &lsquo;AGLC controls the importation, manufacture, sale, possession, storage, distribution and use of liquor in Alberta.&rsquo;
&ldquo;The actual liquor stores are privately owned. I think Saskatchewan is similar.&nbsp;
&ldquo;It was our premier's choice to not do something stupid. Free trade is better for everyone.
Diplomacy (lost art) is better for everyone, and really, how do you win against a country 10 times our size that our country has become fat and lazy depending on, with Mr. Trump as leader?&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After the subject of &ldquo;shadow work&rdquo; came up <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-witch-doctors">in yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>, a reader weighed in with a blast from the past.
&ldquo;The late patriot Vivien Kellems refused to collect taxes on that basis, citing it for what it is: INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Wow, it&rsquo;s been decades since I first read about her in Murray Rothbard&rsquo;s For a New Liberty.
Born in 1896, Kellems founded her own company in 1927, manufacturing custom grips to move electrical cables through tight spaces.
But what put her on the map was her resistance to Washington&rsquo;s &ldquo;unfunded mandate&rdquo; requiring employers to collect withholding taxes &mdash; implemented in the 1940s as a wartime measure, but kept in place after World War II was over.
(Amazing how that works, right?)
Wrote Rothbard: &ldquo;As the intrepid Connecticut industrialist Vivien Kellems argued years ago, the employer is forced to expend time, labor and money in the business of deducting and transmitting his employees' taxes to the federal and state governments&mdash;yet the employer is not recompensed for this expenditure.&rdquo;
Kellems herself was more pithy: "If they wanted me to be their agent, they'd have to pay me, and I want a badge."
She fought the feds from 1948 all the way up to her death in 1975. Her heirs had to fork over $265,000 in back taxes.
Shortly before she died, Kellems told the Los Angeles Times, &ldquo;Our tax law is a 1,598-page hydra-headed monster and I'm going to attack and attack and attack until I have ironed out every fault in it."
We&rsquo;re not sure what yardstick Kellems was using to arrive at that total&hellip; but conservative estimates put it between 4,200 and 6,900 pages now.
And that&rsquo;s just the statues, not the regulations and case law&hellip;

FMF-Issue-12-10-25(Featured)

Silver Squeeze 2025 (Update)

5min-issue-12-09-25(Featured)

Wall Street’s “Witch Doctors”

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Change We Must
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;One of the most difficult concepts to accept in the economy and markets is change,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
Enrique is the first to acknowledge that investors have lost untold amounts of money by saying This time is different.
But at the same time, you can also lose money by witnessing change that&rsquo;s taken place&hellip; and denying it&rsquo;s real.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Which brings us to a classic observation of Warren Buffett&hellip;
"You have to be wildly optimistic to believe that corporate profits as a percent of GDP can, for any sustained period, hold much above 6%."
Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP is one of the metrics Buffett has long relied on to determine whether the broad stock market is over- or undervalued.
That quote, by the way, comes from an interview with Fortune in November 1999. It&rsquo;s become legendary because, as it turned out, the dot-com bubble was only weeks away from bursting. The Nasdaq slid 78% from early 2000 through late 2002.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Now&hellip; check out a chart Enrique spotted over the weekend &mdash; going all the way back to the end of World War II, when Buffett was still a teenager.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/47eBmXLPPR8sd2919dIckU/c575835d9aee8d248928106084186a93/FMF-Issue-12-08-25_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Look what&rsquo;s happened since the rebound from the 2007&ndash;09 financial crisis. Corporate profits as a percent of GDP have been far over the 6% level and indeed have spent most of that time over 9%.
&ldquo;We are now at 16 years and counting,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;Is that &lsquo;sustained&rsquo;?&rdquo;
I can hear an objection already: Yeah, look at all the funny money printed by the Federal Reserve since 2008&hellip; and all the wild federal spending since 2020. Of course the money would find its way into financial assets.
And your point?
Object to the policy all you want, but the S&amp;P 500 has grown over 10X from its March 2009 lows.
Like or not, that&rsquo;s change.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;You have to invest in the market environment you have&hellip; not the one you want,&rdquo; Enrique reminds us.
&ldquo;A strong technical picture is supported by falling interest rates, strong earnings and lower energy prices.
&ldquo;On top of that, the Trump administration has plummeting approval ratings and a midterm election next year that will define his legacy.
&ldquo;My view is he will do anything &mdash; legal or illegal &mdash; to get this stock market higher and secure a victory in the midterms.
&ldquo;It may end badly, but that&rsquo;s where we are right now.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Market Miscellany
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Gee, what was it we said here Friday about the Netflix-Warner Bros. tie-up being anything but a done deal?
Last night, Donald Trump told reporters &ldquo;there could be a problem&rdquo; with the deal owing to Netflix&rsquo;s existing &ldquo;big market share.&rdquo;
This morning, Paramount launched a hostile bid &mdash; offering $108 billion for the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery. That contrasts with Netflix&rsquo;s agreement to pay $72 billion for the WB movie studio and HBO Max &mdash; excluding the cable channels like CNN and Discovery.
Paramount CEO David Ellison tells CNBC that his is the &ldquo;superior alternative&rdquo; and is more likely to meet with regulators&rsquo; approval.
On the theory Paramount has the inside track, Paramount shares are up 7.3% on the day while Netflix is down 4.3% (on top of Friday&rsquo;s losses). WBD, the object of this bidding war, is up 4.9%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for the major indexes, they&rsquo;re all starting the week in the red &mdash; if only a bit.
The S&amp;P 500 is down about a third of a percent at 6,847. The Dow&rsquo;s losses are similar, while the Nasdaq is down less than a quarter percent. &ldquo;Large caps only need one solid trading day to post new all-time highs,&rdquo; observes The Trading Desk&rsquo;s Greg Guenthner.
Congratulations are in order for Catalyst Trader readers. This morning Ray Blanco urged them to sell half their position in the developer of an oral weight-loss drug. That&rsquo;s a 182% gain in seven months. Plus, on Friday Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence readers took a 78% gain on B2Gold Corp.
Not much movement in precious metals with gold just under $4,200 and silver a few pennies under $58. Crude has tumbled back below $60, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate down nearly a buck to $59.15.
Bitcoin is holding the line on $90,000 and Ethereum is sitting tight just over $3,100.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> U.S. tariffs haven&rsquo;t put a dent in China&rsquo;s export machine.
China&rsquo;s customs administration reports that exports in the first 11 months of the year have topped $1 trillion &mdash; exceeding 2024&rsquo;s all-year record total.
The figures show November exports rose 5.9% year-over-year. That&rsquo;s even though Chinese exports to the United States have fallen 29% during the same period. Clearly the rest of the world is stepping up to buy the consumer-y crap that&rsquo;s become more expensive for Americans.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" /> Lights Out
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It turns out 2024 was a terrible year for power outages.
The U.S. Department of Energy is out with a report showing U.S. electricity consumers experienced an average 11 hours of power outages last year.
That&rsquo;s nearly twice as many as the annual average during the preceding decade.
Of course, averages are deceiving: Many people caught up in Hurricanes Helene and Milton went without power for days or weeks. Hurricanes accounted for 80% of the total lost hours.
&ldquo;Interruptions attributed to major events averaged nearly nine hours in 2024, compared with an average of nearly four hours per year in 2014 through 2023,&rdquo; says the report. &ldquo;Service interruptions that aren&rsquo;t triggered by major events routinely average about two hours per year.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/fykICAb4jhCqjKVTeICUV/e53b9c135823d0425329d36c4d417839/FMF-Issue-12-08-25_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
We&rsquo;ve been warning about the fragility of the power grid since mid-2022. Much of the grid is 30 years old, and portions are 50 years old.
And with the intense demand from AI data centers &mdash; a phenomenon we started discussing nearly two years ago &mdash; the situation is sure to get worse.
Paradigm readers have profited throughout 2025 playing the &ldquo;independent power producers&rdquo; that are not regulated utilities, and more opportunities are likely to present themselves in 2026. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Stop, Thief! (Self-Checkout)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Maybe we&rsquo;ve reached &ldquo;Peak Self-Checkout.&rdquo;
LendingTree recently commissioned a survey revealing 27% of consumers who&rsquo;ve used self-checkout say they&rsquo;ve purposely taken something without scanning it &mdash; up from 15% two years ago.
Generationally, millennials lead the way &mdash; with 41% saying they&rsquo;ve done it, followed by 37% of Gen Z adults. Only 2% of Boomers fessed up to it.
As the NewsNation network reports, &ldquo;When asked why they stole, 47% said the current financial climate has made it difficult to afford essentials. Nearly as many (46%) cited higher prices.&rdquo; Meanwhile, 35% say self-checkout amounts to &ldquo;unpaid work,&rdquo; so taking a small item &ldquo;feels like compensation.&rdquo;
Several retailers are rethinking self-checkout &mdash; notably Dollar General, which said last year it removed self-checkout from 12,000 stores. The company was upfront about the reasons &mdash; the &ldquo;ongoing challenge from shrink.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I get that people are frustrated,&rdquo; says LendingTree analyst Matt Schulz, &ldquo;but no one should encourage people to walk away from a retailer without paying for something.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Spinning a Gold Scenario
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;What if the U.S. Treasury were to intentionally cause the avalanche in physical gold demand &mdash; spiking prices in order to revalue its gold holdings at substantially higher prices?&rdquo; a reader muses.
&ldquo;They could create $2 or $3 trillion of balance sheet headroom to enable the Fed to buy longer-term treasuries managing the long end of the yield curve.
&ldquo;Combined with the Fed bringing down the overnight rate and the GENIUS Act creating demand for short-term Treasuries, borrowing costs for consumers, businesses and the U.S. government could be reduced substantially.
&ldquo;If done before the midterm elections, it could be the answer to the whole affordability conversation (until the inevitable inflation sets in later).&rdquo;
Dave responds: Can&rsquo;t rule anything out, I suppose.
That said, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been fairly clear. He got a lot of buzz earlier this year when he promised the administration was hatching a scheme to &ldquo;monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.&rdquo;
Asked later about whether that included revaluing the gold &mdash; still officially on the Treasury&rsquo;s books at $42.22 an ounce &mdash; he said that&rsquo;s &ldquo;not what I had in mind.&rdquo;
Plus, a high gold price almost always correlates with a lack of confidence in either the U.S. dollar, U.S. Treasury debt &mdash; or both. That&rsquo;s probably not the message the administration wants to telegraph, however unintentionally.
Still, there&rsquo;s no shortage of other catalysts to trigger a supply squeeze. Keep stacking!